MEMRI recently reported that Palestinian journalist Abd Al-Bari Fayyad published an article titled, “Sednaya [Prison] and Gaza’s Prisons – Two Sides of the Same Coin.”
By Rachel Avraham
In a recent video put out by the Center for Peace Communications titled “From Syria to Gaza: The Torture of Political Prisoners,” Amin Abed, a Gazan political prisoner, stated: “When I saw what was happening in the prisons of Syria, especially Sednaya, it brought back memories of Hamas prisons. They used methods such as sodomy, direct beatings, torture, etc. They’d hang you from the ceiling all day or force you to stand, sit or kneel all day. They deprive you of sleep, beat you, whip your feet, hang you by the hands, and they’d strip off our clothes and pour cold water on our bodies in the dead of winter.”
Ahmed Ard Al Awad, a Syrian political prisoner, concurred that similar conditions existed in Syrian prisons: “At Sednaya, they would call out our names at dawn, strip the prisoner of their clothes and take them away. One of the national security officers was named Manhel Suleiman. He would lash prisoners 500 times without stopping. During one such search, an officer declared, ‘We’re not here to inspect; we’re here to kill.’”
Ahmed Hweya, another Gazan political prisoner, then stated, “Regarding the Sednaya political prison in Syria, the torture of political prisoners or even ordinary civilians who expressed their opinions, it looks exactly like what happened to us in Gaza. It’s like the same dictatorship, just with a different name.” Ahmed Hilles, another Gazan political prisoner, related, “The Syrian prisons reminded me of many things. Honestly, I felt as if I was reliving the period when I was in Gaza’s jails.”
The Center for Peace Communications is not the only one to draw parallels between Syrian and Gazan prisons. MEMRI recently reported that Palestinian journalist Abd Al-Bari Fayyad published an article titled, “Sednaya [Prison] and Gaza’s Prisons – Two Sides of the Same Coin.” In the article, he proclaimed: “Those incarcerated in [Syria’s] Sednaya prison – infamous for the torture and barbaric acts [carried out in it] during the reign of the deposed Syrian regime – emerged from the dungeons into the light, returned to their homes, and the weeping preceded the embraces.”
According to him, “They have nightmares about the curses of the prison guards, and when they wake up they still struggle to believe they are free. Most of them do not [even] know what they were accused of or why they were arrested, but their testimonies all prove that they endured unbearable barbarism.” Fayyad continued, “Amid our joy over the liberation of the people of Syria, we discovered a series of videos [that showed] Palestinians in Hamas’s prisons being tortured with the same barbarity that was employed by the Assad regime before its downfall… Looking at both sides, we find a chilling resemblance between the Assad regime in Syria and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Despite Hamas’ claim that it cares about the people [of Gaza], the facts show that the opposite is true. Hamas’ behavior proves that it is disconnected from reality, living on another planet, as if the daily massacres [in Gaza] are none of its concern. Hamas breaks limbs, causes pain and inflicts suffering on those [Gazans] whom the occupation has not harmed. Furthermore, Hamas and its media have many pre-prepared accusations [that they bring against people] to justify this barbarity, which cannot be justified.”
According to Fayyad, “One of the videos shows Hamas members brutally torturing a resident [of Gaza] due to opposition [voiced by] residents and activists and after they demonstrated against Hamas’s positions and against the October 7 attack, which caused the destruction of the Gaza Strip, the death of 45,000 Palestinians and the wounding of 70,000… The [Hamas] movement also kidnapped five people who accused it of causing the war in Gaza and its subsequent reoccupation [by Israel].”
“What caught my attention were statements made in one of the videos by a Palestinian who said that Hamas members tried to break his fingers so that he would no longer be able to write criticism against the movement and its actions on October 7,” Fayyad wrote. “Historically, Hamas has a record of violence against its political rivals in Gaza. It sends masked gunmen to murder them, cripple them and arrest them. It has executed, tortured and targeted [them] without a trial… That is exactly what the Bashar Al-Assad regime used to do. There is great similarity between the two regimes, although the tortured [victims] are different.”
Fayyad concluded, “There is just one explanation for Hamas’ [practice of] torturing, persecuting and breaking the limbs of anyone who dares to criticize it, namely its sense of inferiority and its desperate attempt to show that it controls everything in Gaza, as though its latest escapade [i.e., the October 7 attack] did not affect it at all. That is why it will continue to insist on maintaining its rule despite the broken nose of the Palestinian people.”
