Inside Assad’s secret police headquarters: Reporter’s pocket book

The Stasi Museum in East Berlin is wonderful, not least as a result of it is the precise former headquarters of East Germany’s secret police. You’ll be able to go into the precise places of work the place information on thousands and thousands of East German residents had been saved. Into the cells the place dissidents had been stored. You’ll be able to stroll the halls the place these on the very middle of a sinister police state spied on, intimidated and deliberate violence in opposition to their very own individuals.

That is what we did Friday in Damascus, Syria. Besides we had been in one of the crucial infamous divisions of the Syrian intelligence companies.

It was known as Department 235, and its job was to spy not solely on the overall inhabitants however on the opposite components of presidency as nicely.

The facility of the Assad regime was the paranoia it planted within the minds of everybody who labored for the state. Nobody knew who to belief and anybody might be taken at any second, leading to assured absolute fealty to the Assads. Till it wasn’t.

Within the burned-out constructing, we come throughout a room filled with information nonetheless intact. A file for every individual the regime had spied on.

I open one file – a easy inexperienced doc pockets – and discover it to be on a colonel within the Syrian military. The duvet observe advises “Proceed monitoring his behaviour, as a result of he is appearing suspiciously.” It’s like studying a spy novel. Besides that is actual life. The file is dated 2015 – the peak of the protest motion in opposition to the federal government and when regime paranoia would have been at its highest. Behind the quilt observe, web page after web page of experiences from informants on this one man.

We discover a number of different information, all on particular person troopers, with very detailed observations. The regime fell so rapidly and the looting and burning adopted with such ferocity, that a lot of the proof of Assad’s crimes is misplaced. However on this one room, saved from the fireplace that had burned a lot else, we bought a small glimpse into Assad’s system of concern.

Within the courtyard, we meet Mohammad, a former prisoner who’s taking his probabilities and coming again to the cell he was held in 12 years in the past. We stroll collectively down into the basement, and he reveals me the place he was stored.

Tiny, coffin-like cells that 4 males had been made to share. We see the straightforward video games scratched into the wall the place detainees had tried to go the time. I acknowledge Tic-Tac-Toe. We hint the poetry written on the again of one of many doorways, “I am scared to die, my love, with out seeing you once more,” says the Arabic verse, scratched into the black paintwork.

I ask Mohammad how he feels being again. He smiles. “I can breathe now,” he says.