4 March 2021
Wejdan Nassif, a friend and former cellmate of Samira al-Khalil, the Syrian democracy activist imprisoned by Hafez al-Assad and then abducted by Islamists, recalls their time together inside and outside prison.
Jail
In a talk co-organized by the assassinated activist Lokman Slim, former Syrian political prisoner Yassin al-Haj Saleh argues that “the politics of prison” are central to understanding the “politicide” of the Syrian people at the Assad regime’s hands.
Al-Jumhuriya gains access to Qudsaya juvenile prison, where food shortages, drugs, and physical and psychological abuse are rampant, leaving many detainees worse off when they come out than when they went in.
A former inmate at Syria’s Adra Women’s Prison recounts the struggles, deprivations, and occasional pleasures of food in the notorious jail.
A former political prisoner under Hafez al-Assad recalls the “impossible stage” on which inmates covertly performed plays in one of Syria’s most notorious penitentiaries.
At a recent talk in California, Charles Davis encountered a microcosm of the left's rupture on Syria.