Lebanese Housewife Tells of Horrifying 8 Years in Syrian Torture Camps
On the occasion of the one-year anniversary of Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon, An Nahar published the horrifying story of Hala el Hajj, a Lebanese housewife who spent 8 years of hell in Syria's torture camps.Hajj was kidnapped in Beirut in 1992 and then disappeared for 8 years during which she was transferred to three detention centers run by the Syrian intelligence services in Lebanon and Syria where she was tortured, almost starved to death and thrown in an underground cell hardly big enough for a dog.Hajj, who now lives with her family in France, is married to Gaby Karam, a Lebanese intelligence officer. She says Syrian agents, who were after her husband, seized her near the Beirut Museum after they failed to capture Karam.Her four assailants immediately handcuffed her, placed a black bag over her head and drove her to the notorious Syrian intelligence command center near the Beau Rivage Hotel in Beirut.For three days, she was beaten with sticks while the bag was still covering her head and her hands were in cuffs. The beatings were so severe that her face was mangled and covered with blood while she slipped in and out of consciousness.When her tormentors failed to make her confess that she was gathering information about the Syrian army in Lebanon, Hajj was transferred to Syrian intelligence headquarters at Anjar in the Bekaa Valley where she met Ghazi Kanaan, the head of Syria's security operations in the country at the time."We will strip off the skin of anyone in Lebanon who dares to say anything (negative) about Syria," Hajj recalls Kanaan as saying to her and the 8 other people who arrived at Anjar on that fateful day.After their short stop in the Bekaa, Hajj and her fellow detainees were hauled into truck and taken across the border to the Mazzeh detention in Damascus where political prisoners are usually interrogated before being sent to jails in other parts of Syria.As soon as the group got off the truck they were received with more beatings and insults, recalls Hajj."I will crush the biggest head in Lebanon with this boot," Hajj quotes one of her tormentors Munir el Abras as saying to them.Of all her long ordeal, Hajj seems to have been particularly marked by her arrival at Mazzeh."I will never forget this night. We called on all the prophets and saints to show their mercy but (our prayers) were in vain," she said.The worst was yet to come. The prisoners were then led to their cells which Hajj said were 40 meters underground. She described them as dim boxes that were no bigger than 80x180cm with a ceiling height of 1.5 meters.Hajj recounts the torture methods used at Mazzeh which included whippings, removal of finger nails, beatings of genital areas, electric shocks to the nose and ears, burning with cigarettes and hanging from the ceiling sometimes for days. Their injuries were covered with salt to make them even more painful and when they passed out from the pain, they were drenched with ice cold water to wake them up.Hajj miraculously survived 150 days of unbearable torture during which she was fed handfuls of stale bread mixed with unrecognizable particles and forced to defecate and urinate on herself.When Hajj's torturers realized she had no information to give them, they allowed her to bathe, change into a Syrian army uniform and then they transferred her to a cell with other Lebanese and Jordanian women. They were all charged with "threatening Syrian security."Hajj says she was released after interventions on her behalf. Ironically, after she was handed over to Lebanese intelligence, she was beaten again during a debriefing session."Weren't eight years of torture in Syria enough? I now speak Arabic with a Syrian accent and cannot remember the names of my own family members. What do you still want from me?" Hajj said she told her Lebanese interrogators.