Syria & Middle East News Catch-all | Lebanon Finally Elects a PM
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StrangePackage
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StrangePackage
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Seems to be not linking
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Yeah not sure why, but added a screen shot.
superrific
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fixed it
Callatoroy
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Assad needs to be removed from the earth. Will anyone do it?
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Secret Assad files show Stasi of Syria put children on trial
Analysis of intelligence documents reveals that family members spied on each other, teachers betrayed pupils — and ‘traitors’ were tortured and killed
www.thetimes.com
Secret Assad files show Stasi of Syria put children on trial
Analysis of intelligence documents reveals that family members spied on each other, teachers betrayed pupils — and ‘traitors’ were tortured and killed
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“… Like the East German Stasi, the Assad regime recorded in unsparing, bureaucratic detail the lives of the people they suspected of being their enemies — including those who worked for them — in stamped, signed and catalogued documents stacked on endless rows of dusty shelves.
By tapping phones, hacking computers and sending agents to surveil suspects in person, the security services gathered an incredibly comprehensive, and often deeply boring, level of detail about the lives of the people they were watching.
Surveillance reports by informants included exhaustive accounts of the location of the garage where the mother of a suspect got her car fixed, the regularity with which another suspect visited his in-laws and the number of apartment buildings owned by a third.
…
No one was safe from the regime. Last spring, a handwritten entry in a book of people arrested by the political intelligence branch in Homs notes the detention of a 12-year-old boy, brought in “for tearing up a sheet of paper bearing a picture of the president”.
The interrogation report reads: “On [date] while [the accused] was in his classroom, a torn sheet of paper was found under his desk. The paper bore a picture of the president. [The boy] then threw it in the bin. Subsequently, his teacher was informed. He, in turn, informed the educational supervisor at the [school], who informed the police station.”
They then turned the case over to the political intelligence branch.
“The teacher [name] was brought in for interrogation, and confirmed that he was told about the torn paper by other students in the classroom. When he asked the [boy] about it, the [boy] claimed that he had torn up the paper without noticing the picture of the president. The teacher confirmed to us that the student is quiet with good manners and had never previously displayed negative behaviour. We ran a security check on his family background and it transpired that they were not involved in any activities related to the ongoing events in the country.”
The boy, the report notes, told interrogators: “He didn’t have bad intentions and didn’t intend to offend anyone”.
Nonetheless, four days after he was accused of tearing the sheet of paper, the 12-year-old suspect was sent to stand trial in front of the courts.
The report ends there.…”
By tapping phones, hacking computers and sending agents to surveil suspects in person, the security services gathered an incredibly comprehensive, and often deeply boring, level of detail about the lives of the people they were watching.
Surveillance reports by informants included exhaustive accounts of the location of the garage where the mother of a suspect got her car fixed, the regularity with which another suspect visited his in-laws and the number of apartment buildings owned by a third.
…
No one was safe from the regime. Last spring, a handwritten entry in a book of people arrested by the political intelligence branch in Homs notes the detention of a 12-year-old boy, brought in “for tearing up a sheet of paper bearing a picture of the president”.
The interrogation report reads: “On [date] while [the accused] was in his classroom, a torn sheet of paper was found under his desk. The paper bore a picture of the president. [The boy] then threw it in the bin. Subsequently, his teacher was informed. He, in turn, informed the educational supervisor at the [school], who informed the police station.”
They then turned the case over to the political intelligence branch.
“The teacher [name] was brought in for interrogation, and confirmed that he was told about the torn paper by other students in the classroom. When he asked the [boy] about it, the [boy] claimed that he had torn up the paper without noticing the picture of the president. The teacher confirmed to us that the student is quiet with good manners and had never previously displayed negative behaviour. We ran a security check on his family background and it transpired that they were not involved in any activities related to the ongoing events in the country.”
The boy, the report notes, told interrogators: “He didn’t have bad intentions and didn’t intend to offend anyone”.
Nonetheless, four days after he was accused of tearing the sheet of paper, the 12-year-old suspect was sent to stand trial in front of the courts.
The report ends there.…”
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So much hope in Syria right now.
I know that history doesn’t give Syria good odds of emerging from this with a vibrant democracy as a beacon of change in the Middle East (pretty much the opposite, in fact), but it is still hard not to feel the wondering joy of a people who have thrown off the yoke of a brutal dictatorship like the Assads have run there for the entire lives of most Syrians.
I know that history doesn’t give Syria good odds of emerging from this with a vibrant democracy as a beacon of change in the Middle East (pretty much the opposite, in fact), but it is still hard not to feel the wondering joy of a people who have thrown off the yoke of a brutal dictatorship like the Assads have run there for the entire lives of most Syrians.