Imprisoned in the worst prison in Syria
Fall of Assad: Pilot is released after 43 years
Updated on December 9, 2024Reading time: 2 min.
The Assad regime was known for its extreme brutality against opposition figures. Now many of them are being released – some after more than half a life in prison.
With the collapse of the Assad regime, the balance of power in Syria has suddenly changed. While Assad has probably fled the country, a number of opposition figures are being freed from prison. According to information from the Turkish television station TRT, Ragheed al-Tatari is said to be among them. He was imprisoned for 43 years – making him the longest-held political prisoner in Syria.
Tatari had been imprisoned since 1981 – without ever being given a proper trial, as his son Waill wrote in 2022 for the human rights organization “The Syrian Campaign”. Tatari was arrested for the first time in 1980: as a pilot in the Syrian Air Force, he refused to bomb rebels in the city of Hama in the west of the country. A year later he was arrested again, probably on the grounds that he was said to have helped defectors. The now 70-year-old was 27 at the time.
It took 14 years just to find out where Tatari was, his son wrote in 2022. His father may be the longest-held political prisoner in Syria. But he is just an example of the injustice “from which tens of thousands of prisoners and those who have been forcibly disappeared suffer.” The Assad regime uses imprisonment as a weapon against dissidents and unwanted groups.
Overall, the Syrian rulers were known for their extreme actions against openly dissidents. According to Amnesty International, in addition to torture, opposition members were often forced to disappear or mass hangings occurred.
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Tatari was freed from the Syrian central prison in Damascus on Sunday. As human rights organizations reconstruct, he is said to have been held in other places – including probably for sixteen years in the notorious prison in Tadmor. From the 1970s onwards, more and more resisters were imprisoned here – for example members of the banned Communist Party or the Muslim Brotherhood.
Tadmor prison was feared for its poor conditions and extreme torture. According to Amnesty International, the military killed between 500 and 1,000 prisoners in 1980 in retaliation for an attack on the then Syrian ruler Hafez al-Assad. In 2015 the prison was blown up by IS.