Story of a Kurdish prisoner in Syria
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Sherzad Mahmood Mamo was a taxi driver. He was arrested in July 2021 at a checkpoint while driving some customers from Ashrafia to Nubl in northern Aleppo.
The officers at the checkpoint tied his legs together and called security forces affiliated with the intelligence directorate to come and take him. While waiting, they destroyed his car in front of him.
Mamo was moved between four different jails, subjected to torture in each one. Eventually he ended up in the notorious Palestine Branch prison, operated by the intelligence directorate.
There, he was kept in underground solitary confinement where he could not tell if it was day or night. An interrogator asked him “Do you know how long you have been here?” Mamo did not know. The officer told him “You have been here for three months and seven days.”
The interrogators tortured him in numerous ways, both mentally and physically. They burned him on a metal platform heated from beneath or with scalding hot water, they electrocuted him, and cut his legs. Mamo recalled prison guards giving the inmates spoiled chicken, which caused them to be sick for ten days. The prisoners were also given salty water to drink.
During his incarceration, the Covid-19 pandemic struck the prison system.
“They put us in quarantine while I was there. They put a dead body in my cell for two days until they removed it,” said Mamo.
He remembers meeting other Kurds in prison. Mamo said he was once beaten for an entire night because his name is Kurdish.
Mamo was eventually brought to a court in Aleppo and appeared before a military judge. The judge told the officers to “Uncuff his hands, let him go home.” However, one of the officers told the judge that he was wanted by state security, so Mamo was interrogated for another three days before he was finally released in January 2022.
“I was hurt very badly by the military police and Palestine Branch prison,” Mamo told Rudaw.
Mamo lost a lot of weight during his six months in prison. When he was released, he was suffering from infected sores and wounds, and could not see more than a meter ahead of him.
He has since gotten treatment and his health has improved.
In 2017, Amnesty International wrote about Syrian prisons where prisoners were tortured and abused. “Many of the people we spoke to said they had been beaten with plastic hose pipes, silicone bars and wooden sticks. Some had been scalded with hot water and burnt with cigarettes. Others were forced to stand in water and given electric shocks,” it stated.
More than 100 freed prisoners are currently receiving treatment at al-Mouwasat Hospital in Damascus. The majority of them are suffering from trauma, having lost the ability to speak and unable to recognize their loved ones.
"Frankly, their condition is extremely exhausting. But we like the fact that they feel secure and we are by their side. And we provide medicine based on the condition of the detainee," said Nadin Matni, head of the ambulance team at al-Mouwasat Hospital.
According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, more than 136,614 people, including 3,698 children and 8,504 women, were detained in Syrian prisons during the Syrian civil war between March 2011 and December 2024.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated in January 2021 that 30,000 detainees were brutally killed by the Assad regime in Sednaya prison through torture, ill-treatment, and mass executions since the outbreak of the civil war.
The officers at the checkpoint tied his legs together and called security forces affiliated with the intelligence directorate to come and take him. While waiting, they destroyed his car in front of him.
Mamo was moved between four different jails, subjected to torture in each one. Eventually he ended up in the notorious Palestine Branch prison, operated by the intelligence directorate.
There, he was kept in underground solitary confinement where he could not tell if it was day or night. An interrogator asked him “Do you know how long you have been here?” Mamo did not know. The officer told him “You have been here for three months and seven days.”
The interrogators tortured him in numerous ways, both mentally and physically. They burned him on a metal platform heated from beneath or with scalding hot water, they electrocuted him, and cut his legs. Mamo recalled prison guards giving the inmates spoiled chicken, which caused them to be sick for ten days. The prisoners were also given salty water to drink.
During his incarceration, the Covid-19 pandemic struck the prison system.
“They put us in quarantine while I was there. They put a dead body in my cell for two days until they removed it,” said Mamo.
He remembers meeting other Kurds in prison. Mamo said he was once beaten for an entire night because his name is Kurdish.
Mamo was eventually brought to a court in Aleppo and appeared before a military judge. The judge told the officers to “Uncuff his hands, let him go home.” However, one of the officers told the judge that he was wanted by state security, so Mamo was interrogated for another three days before he was finally released in January 2022.
“I was hurt very badly by the military police and Palestine Branch prison,” Mamo told Rudaw.
Mamo lost a lot of weight during his six months in prison. When he was released, he was suffering from infected sores and wounds, and could not see more than a meter ahead of him.
He has since gotten treatment and his health has improved.
In 2017, Amnesty International wrote about Syrian prisons where prisoners were tortured and abused. “Many of the people we spoke to said they had been beaten with plastic hose pipes, silicone bars and wooden sticks. Some had been scalded with hot water and burnt with cigarettes. Others were forced to stand in water and given electric shocks,” it stated.
More than 100 freed prisoners are currently receiving treatment at al-Mouwasat Hospital in Damascus. The majority of them are suffering from trauma, having lost the ability to speak and unable to recognize their loved ones.
"Frankly, their condition is extremely exhausting. But we like the fact that they feel secure and we are by their side. And we provide medicine based on the condition of the detainee," said Nadin Matni, head of the ambulance team at al-Mouwasat Hospital.
According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, more than 136,614 people, including 3,698 children and 8,504 women, were detained in Syrian prisons during the Syrian civil war between March 2011 and December 2024.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated in January 2021 that 30,000 detainees were brutally killed by the Assad regime in Sednaya prison through torture, ill-treatment, and mass executions since the outbreak of the civil war.