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New Straits Times
5 days ago
- Politics
- New Straits Times
Assad-era political prisoner wants justice
SYRIAN fighter pilot Ragheed Tatari was 26 when he was arrested. Now 70, the country's longest-serving political prisoner is finally free after Bashar al-Assad's fall, seeking justice and accountability. Tatari, arrested in 1981 and sentenced to life behind bars, was among scores of prisoners who walked free when longtime ruler Assad was overthrown on Dec 8. He has made it out alive after 43 years in jail, but tens of thousands of Syrian families are still searching for their loved ones who disappeared long ago in Syria's hellish prison system. "I came close to death under torture," said Tatari in his small Damascus apartment. Since a military field court gave him a life sentence for "collaborating with foreign countries" — an accusation he denies — Tatari was moved from one prison to another, first under late president Hafez al-Assad and then his son Bashar who succeeded him in 2000. Showing old pictures of him in his pilot uniform, Tatari said he was not seeking revenge, but stressed that "everyone must be held accountable for their crimes". More than two million Syrians were jailed under the Assad dynasty's rule, half of them after anti-government protests in 2011 escalated into civil war, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor. The Britain-based monitor says around 200,000 died in custody. Diab Serriya, co-founder of the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison, said Tatari was "the longest-serving political prisoner in Syria and the Middle East". Rights group Amnesty International has called the notorious Saydnaya prison outside Damascus a "human slaughterhouse". Tatari had been detained there, but he said his 15 years in the Palmyra prison in the Syrian desert were the most difficult. The Palmyra facility operated "without any discipline, any laws and any humanity", said Tatari. Detainees were "not afraid of torture — we wished for death", he added. "Everything that has been said about torture in Palmyra... is an understatement. A guard could kill a prisoner if he was displeased with him," said Tatari. In 1980, Palmyra witnessed a massacre of hundreds detainees, gunned down by helicopters or executed in their cells after a failed assassination attempt on Hafez al-Assad. Tatari said he was completely disconnected from the outside world there, only learning of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union through a prisoner who had returned from a hospital visit. In Sweida prison in the south, where Tatari was transferred after the 2011 revolt began, some inmates had phones that they would keep hidden from the guards. "The cell phone gets you out of prison, it makes you feel alive," he said, recalling how he used to conceal his device in a hole dug in his cell. But after his phone was discovered, he was transferred to a prison in Tartus — his final detention facility before gaining freedom. Tatari was one of several military officers who were opposed to Syria's intervention in Lebanon in 1976, and to the violent repression in the early 1980s of the Muslim Brotherhood, Syria's main opposition force at the time. After two of his fellow pilots defected and fled to Jordan in 1980, he escaped to Egypt and then on to Jordan. But he returned when security forces began harassing his family and was arrested on arrival. His wife was pregnant at the time with their first and only son. For years, the family assumed Tatari was dead, before receiving a proof of life in 1997. It was then that Tatari was finally able to meet his son, then aged 16, under the watchful eye of guards during the family's first authorised prison visit that year. His wife has since died and their son left Syria, having received threats at the start of the protest movement, which had spiralled into war and eventually led to Assad's overthrow.
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Exclusive-Qatari financing of Syrian salaries gets US go-ahead, sources say
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways By Timour Azhari and Andrew Mills BEIRUT (Reuters) - U.S. GREENLIGHTS QATARI INITIATIVE TO FINANCE SYRIAN PUBLIC-SECTOR SALARIES, THREE SOURCES SAY FUNDING WILL ALLOW GRADUAL SALARY RAISE OF UP TO 400%, SYRIAN FINANCIAL SOURCE SAYS The United States has greenlighted a Qatari initiative to bankroll Syria's public sector, three sources said, offering a financial lifeline to the new Syrian government as it seeks to rebuild a state shattered by conflict. Qatar, which is among Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa's strongest international backers, had been reluctant to act without the blessing of Washington, which imposed sanctions when ousted leader Bashar al-Assad was in power. Sanctions, 14 years of conflict and decades of crony rule under Assad have bankrupted the state and left civil servants living on a pittance. Meanwhile Sharaa's government has only had partial success in convincing wary Western states that he has turned his back on his Islamist past. Two people briefed on the matter told Reuters that Qatar had been informed about the U.S. greenlight and said the U.S. Treasury Department's office of Foreign Assets Control was expected to imminently provide a letter confirming the initiative was exempt from U.S. sanctions. The move suggests a softening of Washington's position, while European states have moved more swiftly to ease their sanctions. A Syrian financial source said the funding was conditional, and could go only to civilian Syrian public-sector civil servants, with the interior and defence ministries not included. That reflects Western concerns over the fundamentalist history of the group that now rules Syria and is reconstituting its security forces, the source and diplomats said. The financial source said the funding was expected to come through starting next month, allowing for a long-awaited 400% salary rise to be gradually rolled out to more than a million state employees over several months. AMBIGUITY OVER U.S. SANCTIONS All sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak on the matter. Qatar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the U.S. Treasury did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Syria's government would come up with the funds to match the salary rise for employees not included in the Qatari-backed initiative, the Syrian source said. Qatar had planned to provide salary support since soon after Assad was toppled by Islamist rebels Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) last year. The initiative has been held up by ambiguity over U.S. sanctions and the Trump administration's Syria policy. But there are signs that Gulf Arab states have been able to make modest headway lobbying the U.S. to at least allow for engagement with Damascus, with Saudi Arabia and Qatar last month paying off Syria's debts to the World Bank, which opened the door to grants and loans. Saudi Arabia also co-hosted a high-level Syria-focused meeting at the IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington last month, attended by Syria's finance minister and central bank governor for the first time in more than a decade. ECONOMIC PRIORITY The previous U.S. administration issued a sanctions exemption on January 6 to allow transactions with Syria's governing institutions for six months, though states and entities seeking to engage with Syria have sought additional guarantees. Known as a general licence, it marked an effort to ease the flow of humanitarian assistance and allow work with the Syrian energy sector, while keeping sanctions in place overall. Sharaa has called repeatedly for the lifting of Western sanctions, imposed to isolate Assad for his crackdown during Syria's civil war, which started in 2011. Boosting the economy, which has now been opened up in a free market experiment after decades of protectionism, is a top priority for Sharaa. The United Nations says nine out of 10 Syrians live in poverty. The country's interim finance minister in January said that pay for public sector workers would be increased by 400% from February at an estimated monthly cost of 1.65 trillion Syrian pounds ($130 million). He had cited regional aid as one source of funding for the increase. Western policy in Syria is complicated by the jihadist origins of HTS, the armed group that led the push that ousted Assad and is designated a terrorist group by world powers. HTS emerged from the Nusra Front, an al Qaeda affiliate in Syria until Sharaa broke ties in 2016. HTS was officially dissolved in January. (Reporting by Timour Azhari in Beirut and Andrew Mills; Editing by William Maclean)
