2 days ago
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Surviving Syria's Prisons: Bravery of two brothers who exposed the atrocities of Assad's evil regime
Surviving Syria's Prisons (BBC2)
What a strange power the television camera exercises over people. Point a lens at them and they will confess to crimes that, in court or under police questioning, they'd deny to their dying breath.
Filmed in silhouette, their faces in shadow, torturers and prison guards described the atrocities they routinely inflicted on political detainees, in the This World documentary Surviving Syria 's Prisons.
Their testimony was often self-serving. Each one pleaded he had no choice but to mete out brutality and murder. Henchmen took the age-old line that they were 'only obeying orders'. Officers claimed the men below them were an ill-disciplined rabble who could not be restrained.
Despite their excuses, all admitted to sadistic abuse and such extremes of violence that, in an international court, they would surely be facing life sentences.
Even Syria's deposed dictator, Bashar al-Assad, who was overthrown last December, was not immune to the power of the TV camera. In 2011, he appeared on a U.S. talk show, attempting to justify his reign of terror by claiming the thuggish security services were not under his control.
'They are not my forces. They are military forces that belong to the government,' he said. 'I don't own them. I am president, I don't own the country.'
Chinless and goggle-eyed, like a serial killer invented by P.G. Wodehouse, Assad looked desperately pleased with himself to be interviewed by veteran American journalist Barbara Walters.
Clearly, he was achieving a long-held ambition to appear on a prestigious U.S. show, and the fact millions of Americans would learn how his regime ruled by mass murder was a price worth paying.
The limitless evil exposed to daylight in this film was balanced by the extraordinary bravery of two brothers whose work made the programme possible.
Shadi and Hadi Haroun were subjected to years of torment inside Assad's most notorious prison, Saydnaya, as punishment for their role in the Arab Spring protests. They took us into the derelict shell of Saydnaya, 'the human slaughterhouse', where the regime dealt with anyone suspected of opposing Assad's Ba'ath party by word, deed or thought.
Executions by hanging were daily events, not on a gallows but with a noose and a chair. Guards frequently beat men to death or even buried them alive. Satellite photos reveal the existence of around 130 mass graves.
The Haroun brothers were regularly suspended by their arms from the ceiling pipes, side by side, or with their hands manacled behind their backs and doubled over in what they called the 'ghost method'.
How anyone could live through years of that treatment defies comprehension. This was 75 minutes of necessary but relentlessly depressing television. The only relief came from the brothers' devotion to each other.
Grey-bearded Hadi told how the worst agony was being forced to listen to his brother's screams. 'I'd always try to be the one who took the beating rather than him,' he said. Truly nightmarish.
Small Change of the Night:
Bullion robber Charlie (Sam Spruell) had a headache laundering £10million offshore in The Gold (BBC1).
These days, as Oliver Bullough's brilliant book Moneyland makes plain, that's petty cash for tax-evading crooks and tech billionaires.
