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After decades in Assad jails, political prisoner wants justice

After decades in Assad jails, political prisoner wants justice
Former Syrian Air Force pilot Raghid Tatari, Syria’s longest-serving political prisoner, gives an interview at his home in Damascus on May 27, 2025. (AFP)
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Updated 05 June 2025

After decades in Assad jails, political prisoner wants justice

After decades in Assad jails, political prisoner wants justice
  • He has made it out alive after 43 years in jail, but tens of thousands of Syrian families are still searching for their loved ones who disappeared long ago in Syria’s hellish prison system
  • Showing old pictures of him in his pilot uniform, Tatari said he was not seeking revenge, but stressed that “everyone must be held accountable for their crimes“

DAMASCUS: Syrian fighter pilot Ragheed Tatari was 26 when he was arrested. Now 70, the country’s longest-serving political prisoner is finally free after Bashar Assad’s fall, seeking justice and accountability.

Tatari, arrested in 1981 and sentenced to life behind bars, was among scores of prisoners who walked free when longtime ruler Assad was overthrown on December 8 in an Islamist-led offensive.

He has made it out alive after 43 years in jail, but tens of thousands of Syrian families are still searching for their loved ones who disappeared long ago in Syria’s hellish prison system.

“I came close to death under torture,” Tatari told AFP in his small Damascus apartment.

Since a military field court gave him a life sentence for “collaborating with foreign countries” — an accusation he denies — Tatari was moved from one prison to another, first under late president Hafez Assad and then his son Bashar who succeeded him in 2000.

Showing old pictures of him in his pilot uniform, Tatari said he was not seeking revenge, but stressed that “everyone must be held accountable for their crimes.”

“We do not want anyone to be imprisoned” without due process, said Tatari.

More than two million Syrians were jailed under the Assad dynasty’s rule, half of them after anti-government protests in 2011 escalated into civil war, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor.

The Britain-based monitor says around 200,000 died in custody.

Diab Serriya, co-founder of the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison, said that Tatari was “the longest-serving political prisoner in Syria and the Middle East.”

Rights group Amnesty International has called the notorious Saydnaya prison outside Damascus a “human slaughterhouse.”

Tatari had been detained there, but he said his 15 years in the Palmyra prison in the Syrian desert were the most difficult.

The Palmyra facility operated “without any discipline, any laws and any humanity,” Tatari said.

Detainees were “not afraid of torture — we wished for death,” he added.

“Everything that has been said about torture in Palmyra... is an understatement.”

“A guard could kill a prisoner if he was displeased with him,” Tatari said, adding that inmates were forced under torture to say phrases like “Hafez Assad is your god,” although he refused to do so.

In 1980, Palmyra witnessed a massacre of hundreds of mostly Islamist detainees, gunned down by helicopters or executed in their cells after a failed assassination attempt on Hafez Assad.

Tatari said he was completely disconnected from the outside world there, only learning of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union through a prisoner who had returned from a hospital visit.

In Sweida prison in the south, where Tatari was transferred after the 2011 revolt began, some inmates had phones that they would keep hidden from the guards.

“The cell phone gets you out of prison, it makes you feel alive,” he said, recalling how he used to conceal his device in a hole dug in his cell.

But after his phone was discovered, he was transferred to a prison in Tartus — his final detention facility before gaining freedom.

Tatari was one of several military officers who were opposed to Syria’s intervention in Lebanon in 1976, and to the violent repression in the early 1980s of the Muslim Brotherhood, Syria’s main opposition force at the time.

“Many of us were against involving the army in political operations,” he said.

After two of his fellow pilots defected and fled to Jordan in 1980, he escaped to Egypt and then on to Jordan.

But he returned when security forces began harassing his family and was arrested on arrival.

His wife was pregnant at the time with their first and only son.

For years, the family assumed Tatari was dead, before receiving a proof of life in 1997 after paying bribes, a common practice under the Assads’ rule.

It was then that Tatari was finally able to meet his son, then aged 16, under the watchful eye of guards during the family’s first authorized prison visit that year.

“I was afraid... I ended the meeting after 15 minutes,” Tatari said.

His wife has since died and their son left Syria, having received threats at the start of the protest movement, which had spiralled into war and eventually led to Assad’s overthrow.

During his time behind bars, Tatari said he “used to escape prison with my thoughts, daydreams and drawing.”

“The regime getting toppled overnight was beyond my dreams... No one expected it to happen so quickly.”


Syria requires women to wear burkinis on public beaches

Syria requires women to wear burkinis on public beaches
Updated 58 min 40 sec ago

Syria requires women to wear burkinis on public beaches

Syria requires women to wear burkinis on public beaches
  • Tourism ministry decision issued this week marks the first time the Damascus authorities have issued guidelines related to what women can wear since Bashar Assad was toppled

DAMASCUS: Syria’s Islamist-led government has decreed that women should wear burkinis or other swimwear that covers the body at public beaches and swimming pools, while permitting Western-style beachwear at private clubs and luxury hotels.

The tourism ministry decision issued this week marks the first time the Damascus authorities have issued guidelines related to what women can wear since Bashar Assad was toppled in December.

During the Assad family’s iron-fisted rule of Syria, which was shaped by a secular Arab nationalist ideology, the state imposed no such restrictions, though people often dressed modestly at public beaches, reflecting conservative norms.

The new requirements were set out in a wider decree dated June 9 and which included public safety guidelines for beaches and swimming pools ahead of the summer, such as not spending too long in the sun and avoiding jellyfish.

It said that beachgoers and visitors to public pools should wear “appropriate swimwear that respects public decency and the feelings of different segments of society,” requiring “more modest swimsuits” and specifying “the burkini or swimming clothes that cover the body more.”

Women should wear a cover or a loose robe over their swimwear when moving between the beach and other areas, it said.

Men should wear a shirt when not swimming, and are not allowed to appear bare-chested “in the public areas outside the swimming areas – hotel lobbies or ... restaurants,” it said.

The decree added that “in public areas outside the beaches and swimming pools,” it was preferable to wear loose clothing that covers the shoulders and knees and to avoid transparent or very tight clothing.

It offered an exception for hotels classed as four stars or above, and for private beaches, pools and clubs, saying “normal Western swimwear” was generally permitted, “with adherence to public morals and within the limits of public taste.”

Since Sunni Islamist-led rebels overthrew Assad, fliers have appeared urging women to cover up, but the government has issued no directives ordering them to observe conservative dress codes.

A temporary constitution passed earlier this year strengthened the language on the role of sharia (Islamic law) in Syria.

Interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, who led an Al-Qaeda group before cutting ties with the jihadist network, has sidestepped interviewers’ questions on whether he thought Syria should apply sharia, saying this was for experts to decide.


Israel opposition submits bill to dissolve parliament: statement

Israel opposition submits bill to dissolve parliament: statement
Updated 11 June 2025

Israel opposition submits bill to dissolve parliament: statement

Israel opposition submits bill to dissolve parliament: statement

JERUSALEM: Israel’s opposition leaders said Wednesday they submitted a bill to dissolve parliament, which if successful could start paving the way to a snap election.
Ultra-Orthodox parties that are propping up Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government are threatening to vote for the motion.
“The opposition faction leaders have decided to bring the bill to dissolve the Knesset to a vote in the Knesset plenum today. The decision was made unanimously and is binding on all factions,” the leaders said in a statement, adding that all their parties would freeze their ongoing legislation to focus on “the overthrow of the government.”
 


Gaza rescuers say 31 killed by Israel fire near aid center

Gaza rescuers say 31 killed by Israel fire near aid center
Updated 11 June 2025

Gaza rescuers say 31 killed by Israel fire near aid center

Gaza rescuers say 31 killed by Israel fire near aid center
  • Israeli troops fired on people waiting to enter a food distribution center

GAZA: The Gaza civil defense agency said Israeli forces opened fire on people waiting to enter a US-backed food distribution center on Wednesday, killing 31 and wounding “about 200.”
“We transported at least 31 martyrs and about 200 wounded as a result of Israeli tank and drone fire on thousands of citizens... on their way to receive food from the American aid center,” civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
The Israeli army did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.
Restrictions imposed on media in the Gaza Strip and the difficulties of access on the ground mean AFP is not able to independently verify the death tolls announced by the civil defense agency.
Bassal said thousands of Palestinians had been gathering since 2 am (2300 GMT Tuesday) in the hope of reaching the US and Israeli-backed food distribution center.
“Israeli tanks fired several times, then at around 5:30 am intensified their fire, coinciding with heavy fire from drones targeting civilians,” he said.
Mohammad Abu Salima, head of Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital, told AFP it had received the bodies of 24 people killed while waiting to enter the aid center and was treating 96 who had been wounded.
Al-Awda hospital, in Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, said in a statement that it had received seven bodies and was treating 112 people who had been wounded in the same incident.
There have been a series of deadly shootings since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) first opened aid distribution points in the Palestinian territory on May 27, as Israel faced mounting international condemnation over the humanitarian conditions.


Turkish court issues arrest warrant for owner of pro-opposition TV channel

Turkish court issues arrest warrant for owner of pro-opposition TV channel
Updated 11 June 2025

Turkish court issues arrest warrant for owner of pro-opposition TV channel

Turkish court issues arrest warrant for owner of pro-opposition TV channel
  • Arrest warrant for Cafer Mahiroglu, owner of Halk TV, issued as part of an investigation into an alleged criminal organization
  • Several main opposition CHP members including district mayors were arrested under the investigation

ANKARA: An Istanbul court has issued an arrest warrant for the owner of a television channel aligned with Turkiye’s main opposition party on charges of bid-rigging, the prosecutor’s office said late on Tuesday.

The arrest warrant for Cafer Mahiroglu, owner of Halk TV, was issued as part of an investigation into an alleged criminal organization suspected of rigging public tenders by bribing public officials.

Several main opposition CHP members including district mayors were arrested under the investigation, part of a widening legal crackdown against the jailed mayor of Istanbul, President Tayyip Erdogan’s main political rival, and the opposition.

Mahiroglu, a Turkish businessperson who lives in London, denied the charges in a post on X.

“I am being accused based on the fabricated false statements and slander of someone I have never met or seen in my life,” he said, adding that he has been living abroad for 35 years.

“So, there is a price to be the owner of Halk TV, the people’s television, and to defend democracy, rights and law.”

He did not say if he would return to Turkiye to contest the charges.

Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), who leads Erdogan in some opinion polls, was jailed in March pending trial on corruption charges, which he denies.

His arrest triggered mass protests, economic turmoil and broad accusations of government influence over the judiciary and anti-democratic applications. The government has denied the accusations and said the judiciary is independent.

Since his arrest, authorities have detained dozens of CHP members, officials from the Istanbul municipality, and other CHP-run municipalities.


Sudanese army retreats from Libyan border after alleging Haftar attack

Sudanese army retreats from Libyan border after alleging Haftar attack
Updated 11 June 2025

Sudanese army retreats from Libyan border after alleging Haftar attack

Sudanese army retreats from Libyan border after alleging Haftar attack
  • Haftar forces denied involvement in the attack and accused a force affiliated with the Sudanese armed forces of attacking a military patrol
  • The war between Sudan’s army and the RSF has drawn in multiple foreign countries

DUBAI:  The Sudanese army retreated from the Libya-Egypt-Sudan border triangle area, it said on Wednesday, a day after it accused forces loyal to eastern Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar of an attack alongside the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
Sudanese soldiers, largely from former rebel groups aligned with the army, had patrolled the area. Sudan’s military, which is fighting against the RSF in a civil war, accuses the RSF and Haftar’s forces of using the corridor for weapons deliveries. The area is close to the city of Al-Fashir, one of the war’s main frontlines.
“As part of its defensive arrangements to repel aggression, our forces today evacuated the triangle area,” the Sudanese army said in a statement without elaborating.
Late on Tuesday, Haftar’s forces had denied participating in a cross-border attack, saying forces allied to the Sudanese army had attacked Libyan patrols.
Sudan accuses the United Arab Emirates, one of Haftar’s backers, of being behind the weapons deliveries, which the UAE denies. Egypt, a close ally of the Sudanese army, also backs Haftar.