Haitham Maleh: Reflecting on torture in prison

Dubai: Haitham Maleh may have been imprisoned and tortured by the Syrian regime, but the 81-year-old member of the Syrian National Council is not looking back and says he is optimistic about the future.

Maleh was born in Damascus in 1931 and has been a lawyer, human rights activist and staunch government critic for over 60 years, which has made him persona-non-grata with a regime that has zero tolerance for those who challenge or question it.

As a practicing lawyer and member of the Lawyers for Social Welfare Association, Maleh began exposing government injustice and irregularities.

His work eventually landed him in trouble with the regime, and at the age of 50 he was arrested.

Witnessing torture

Speaking to Gulf News, he described the horror which he saw in Adra prison for seven years.

"Water-hosing, people being burned with cigarettes, being whipped with electric cables all over their bodies and on their feet, insulting and threatening family members as well," Maleh said.

"Many people died as a result of the torture, especially Kurdish detainees. I am not exaggerating when I say some detainees were killed for no reason — simply for fun."

Specific torture techniques were elaborate and often given fancy names like the "ghost" or the "flying carpet". Inmates were also forced to perform immoral and sexual acts on each other, Maher said.

Perhaps more damaging than the physical abuse was the pyschologicaltorture.

Some inmates were forced into solitary confinement without human interaction for years. Families would never find out the whereabouts of their loved ones.

On top of that inmates often heard the screams of others being tortured. The sounds of the screams were something Maleh said would never leave him.

Maleh credits surviving the ordeal to his belief in God. "The Quran teaches us to be pro-active and patient. I never feared anyone except God," he said.

Maleh was eventually released and in 2001 became president of the Human Rights Association for Syria.

The following year he was named "Best Human Rights Activist of the Year" at the Arab Programme for Human Rights Conference in Cairo.

Since then he has been arrested, questioned and released many times. He is now one of the foremost members of the SNC, the official umbrella group of the Syrian opposition. He travels between Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and Egypt and plans to open up SNC offices in Brussels and Cairo.