bandannie apologizes for the poor presentation
– Press Statement
The
Violation Documentation Center in Syria (VDC) has been informed that Adraa
Women’s prison
has become similar to syrian security branches in many aspects, especially
regarding the way female detainees are treated, the poor health conditions and the lack of
nutrition.
This prison is located in Adraa City in Damascus suburbs, just next to the men’s prison in
the south-eastern side. It has recently witnessed accelerated events, the most recent of which
has been an open hunger strike carried out by women detainees few weeks ago, to demand
better conditions of detention and to accelerate their standing before courts.
Adraa Women’s Prison is divided into two sections:
– Criminal Section:
specialized in various Criminal charges
–
Political Section: divided into two lockups:
1. Commitment lockup:
includes all detainees transferred from various security
branches. At the present time, the number of detainees there is about women,
and this number is subject to changes according to the number of detainees that are
being transferred daily from other security branches, or those who are being moved
to:
2. Arrest lockup:
currently includes more than 40 detainees who have appeared before
the court. This number continues to increase as a result of the large number of
detainees that has been transferred to the judiciary from various security branches.
The
Criminal Section also includes a number of political detainees. This was confirmed by a
lawyer who encountered more than ten cases of detainees that got arrested by security
branches, either because of their participation in revolutionary activities or due to their
political backgrounds, and was consequently admitted to the criminal section, to be sent, later
on, to criminal trials facing purely criminal charges such as prostitution, theft and drug abuse.
——————————————————————————
One of the former female detainees told
VDC that after she had been detained by the Raid
Detachment Branch
215, the subsidiary of Military Intelligence Department, she was
surprisingly transferred to the ” Criminal Section” with dozens of women prisoners who had
been facing criminal charges, on top of which was prostitution, although she had been
arrested in
March 2013 for her revolutionary media and field activism.
Most of the former women detainees whom
VDC interviewed agreed that Adraa Women’s
Prison does not differ much from any other security branch. Many detainees even confirmed
that it turned into a mere security branch, especially the “Commitment Section”, after the
officer in charge of the prison, General “Faisal Oqla
” from Deir ez-Zor, banned all the
privileges that central prisons usually have. He prohibited TVs, radios, refrigerators, buying
any vegetable or meat, and handmade crafts such as
“beads and wool”. He also prohibited the
detainees from making any phone calls, and prohibited the parents from bringing books or
any kind of food for the detainees
. Moreover, prisoners from the “Prostitution Section” were
brought to inspect the other detainees’ personal items in a provocative way
without any
justifiable reasons. All of those mentioned actions began in August 2012.
In Adraa Prison, female detainees are exposed to several kinds of punishments by
the prison guards; such as leaving detainees in the individual cell for long periods,
beating them with truncheons, pull their hair, or beat them on the feet ‘Falaqah’.
One of the female detainees told
VDC:
“Once, a few security guards entered the prison dormitory, and
started beating
more than 20 of the detainees with truncheons. Then, they took one of them-after
taking off her ‘Hijab’ (veil) and pulling her hair-to the ‘torturing room’, where she was
brutally beaten on her feet. She couldn’t walk properly for three days after that. This
happened, specifically, last May 2013.
On another time, during an inspection, they found one of the detainees reading the
Holy Quran. She had a quarrel with them and then they hit her and stepped on the
Holy Quran. This happened, specifically, in July 2013, a few days before Holy
Ramadan.
“
Slow death” is how one of the former female detainees described the condition of some
sick women there. Despite the fact that there were pregnant women, babies, elderly women,
and women with malignant diseases, there were no specialized doctors in Adraa Prison. The
Administration of the Prison justified the lack of medical care by saying that the road to the
hospital is so dangerous due to the clashes, and that sending a detainee to the hospital
requires the ‘approval of some authority’ which they didn’t name. Many deaths have
happened in the prison, the last of which was the death of a detainee, who was very sick and
had some kind of stroke or shortness of breath and died immediately. One of the detainees
who witnessed the incident stated to VDC that
“The other detainees did not know the nature of the disease of (Huda 39 years old,
Homs), as she suffered some kind of “stroke” or “shortness of breath”. Despite the fact that
other detainees asked the guards to take her to the medical clinic, but they refused, which
caused her immediate death. This was in the first week of February 2013.
According to another former detainee testimony, one of her cellmates tried to commit
suicide by cutting her ‘artery’ because they did not provide milk for her 10
-month-old baby,
to whom she gave birth during her detention period in Homs’ Central Prison before being
transferred to Adraa prison. Also, in another incidence recorded few weeks ago, an 8-daysold
baby died in the same prison, due to the lack of nutrition and the absence of newborn
incubators.
The VDC in Syria appeals to all humanitarian and human rights international
organizations to intervene immediately in order to release all female detainees from the
prisons of the Syrian regime, and to stop the heinous practices against Adraa W
omen’s
Prison detainees.
Violation Documentation Center in Syria
September 2013
Websit: www.vdc-sy.org Facebook: www.facebook.com/vdcsy Twitter: twitter.com/VDC_Syria
band annie's Weblog 