Activists cry out for protection against abuse by Assad regime

Detainees arrested during the Baathist regime's crackdown on anti-government protesters were routinely beaten, verbally abused and forced to sign bogus confessions, The Independent has been told.

Interviews conducted earlier this week with anti-regime activists in Douma, a large town east of Damascus which has become one of the hotbeds of dissent since March, have revealed a frightening level of abuse.

Despite the repression, which followed the first demonstrations against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad in March, each Friday protesters have continued to move on to the streets to demand his resignation.

Yesterday, the call was for greater engagement from the international community, which, despite the military action undertaken in Libya, has steadfastly refused to strike against the Syrian regime other than through economic sanctions.

"We want international protection," protesters shouted in cities across the country yesterday, taking to the streets, despite the near-certainty that regime forces will respond with deadly force, and as interviews with this newspaper reveal, violent torture for those that are captured.

In one case, a factory manager in his forties explained how officers in his prison used a medieval-style contraption to torture suspects.

"An inmate at the prison was placed on a board of wood which folded in half," he said. "He was made to lie on his front. The guards began to fold it upwards, and then tied the two ends of the board together with a chain. Then they beat his feet with a cable."

In Douma, another protester explained how he was beaten in an interrogation room. The man, a middle-aged university professor, said: "The guards were hitting me all over my body. I asked them to be careful because I'd had an operation on one of my discs, so they started beating me there instead."

Other rebels said prisoners were often held in solitary confinement, subjected to vicious beatings to extract confessions, and set upon by guards if they were heard praying.

All of the detainees who spoke to The Independent were held in Damascus after being arrested and released over the past month. Some were detained for two or three weeks, though one was kept in prison for 50 days.

A young student, who was stopped by security personnel in Douma while riding on his motorbike and accused of being a scout, described the dreadul conditions detainees were often held in.

"I was put in a room which must have been about six metres long and six wide. At one point there were around 50 people in it. I had to sleep in the bathroom because there was no space in the main room," he said.

"There were no beds, just dirty blankets with cockroaches nesting in them. I was there for 25 days."

A middle-aged father, who once spent six years in the notorious Tadmur Prison during the rule of Hafez al-Assad, the current President's father, explained how he was still required to report to the secret police even though he was released 20 years ago. "I have to go there every two months," he said. "But I do not go to the demonstrations now. If they caught me I would be killed."