"For the first time I stood in front of the mirror, I saw my self ... I saw the contours of my face that I was just feeling by touching ... I was touching my lips and hair that I lost, I saw how much my face changed ... and this was one of the shocks."
With these words, the Turkish youth, Riyad Ullar, describes Al-Jazeera Net as a scene from the moment he got out of prison after 21 years he spent in detention after he went to Syria in 1996 for the purpose of studying the Arabic language, and in less than a year he was arrested, what was the reason?
Ullar says in his interview with Al-Jazeera Net that he heard in Syria about the bloody events that took place in Hama in the early eighties, and the massacre committed by Rifaat al-Assad against the prisoners of Palmyra, "So I started writing these stories, I wanted to send them to friends to publish in Turkish and Western newspapers, when did not I knew that everything in Syria was being watched. I sent a letter by mail for intelligence to pick up, and I was arrested on the road between the governorates of Aleppo and Damascus. "
Ullar and the Syrian detention camps
upon his arrest says, "I closed my eyes and took me and took me down the stairs under the ground, and I was constantly going down, I don't know how many degrees, and they opened a single cell and threw me inside it, it was the biggest shock I lived in my life, I don't know what my fault is, why am I here, to start my journey with Torture. "
"They would take me out from the solo to the torture party, and it was cruel torture, then they would send me back to the solitary cell, and from the officers who supervised the torture of the officer, Atef Najib, who was then a lieutenant colonel, and Abd al-Razzaq Mutlaq, who later became commander of the Damascus police, they arranged charges like all Syrians, and I stayed with this one for two years. "
He describes the solitary solitude by saying that it was "dark, I cannot see anything in it, but my eyes have become accustomed little by little to darkness to the point where I have seen cockroaches and ants on the walls and I have made friends with them, as there is no one I can talk to or seek to talk to about what I have suffered ... about my torment ... .. on my groans, and I reached the wish that they would come out and torture me, to stay alone, loneliness and isolation are very bad. "
"I had not learned Arabic yet, and one of them would come and open an opening in the door, chattering with words that I do not understand and then throw food, and I understood the times of eating, when bringing breakfast I know that it is morning, in addition to the morning, evening and night torture times if my prisoner wanted to. But with the passage of time, I no longer care about timing, and I am not concerned with what time is, because everything is solid around me. "
Moving to the politicians ’wing
for the first time after two years, Riyad Ullar meets people who mention,“ The late Salama Kelly is a Palestinian writer who greeted me and made friends with him. There were detainees in the prison from the Muslim Brotherhood and the Communists, and Syrian Kurdish youth, and they were charged with an identity, and for the first time I heard about People born in their country and the country of their ancestors and grandparents who do not bear the identity of this country. "
Enforced disappearance
says, "I remained for 15 years, forcibly disappeared, forbidden to communicate with anyone, and no one knows anything about me, and I have always been trying to leak information about me, and preventing visits does not only torture the detainee, but also the family, and my brother had come to Syria To search for me, he reached the place of my detention, asked about me and informed him that there is no person with this name, and he tried more than once to ask about me and the third time they told him if he would return that he would be arrested, my father also was looking for me and went to the Syrian embassy in Ankara, and there he suffered a stroke and because of it When he passed away, I knew that after I was released from prison to cause a state of oppression, it is difficult for you to be accompanied by a feeling that your father died while looking for you.
Sednaya prison
When he was transferred to Sednaya prison, which he says was transferred to him with closed eyes, he was subjected to "receiving Sednaya prison, which is torture in all methods, cupboard, bare, armchair ... and here the torture continues for an unknown and indefinite period, so the continuation of torture does not Ends when they are satisfied or busy.
He adds that he witnessed in Sednaya prison the incessant incident that continued between 2007 and 2008, and the prisoners ’demands were to increase water and food, when the regime used excessive force, and after the prisoners captured soldiers, the regime killed the captured soldiers with prisoners, and the prison remained uncontrolled for six months.
Ullar was transferred to another prison and "where my colleagues pointed me to a slab in the ground and told me this is your place, I spent two and a half years in an area of 75 centimeters."
And "with the difficult situation in the prison, we were producing ideas for coexistence. One of my friends ensured that my family was delivered a news story, then I wrote my address in Turkey on a cigarette paper, it was wrapped in a small form and when visiting his mother it was smuggled with his fingernail, and I am grateful to this family that went to Turkey and informed My family is where I am, and for the first time I felt the time when my brother visited me and I had left him eight years old.
The start of the Syrian revolution
With the start of the Syrian revolution, the prisoner felt hopeful with the leaked news, and "I had a feeling that I could leave the prison, and until that time I did not count the days, weeks, or months, I was preparing for the year for the year, and my expectations of leaving the prison were going away And I say possible after 20 or 25 years, my dreams were modest childish. "
Releasing
Riyad Ullar submitted a request for his release to the Public Prosecutor, and the response was that it was possible to submit an application after he had been in prison for 20 years, and that was three months left, “Here my whole life changed before that. I just felt that the day was long and it was like a year, but I wouldn't have been without the money.
The Syrian security handed me to the Turkish security at the Kassab border crossing, my mother, who was waiting for me, crossed the road and removed me from the police car.
Upon handing over to my family my family met around me, there are those who call me my uncle, and there are those who call me uncle, and it was difficult for me to understand what is going on, and for the first time in my life my hand is not placed in my hand, my walk was dysfunctional, and I felt that I had to put my hands in front or back to balance my walk Then I took off the shoe and got away from my family, they told me what to do? I said I longed for dirt, in prison I wrote concrete walls and steel doors, a moment that touches my life. "
What changed between 1996 and 2017?
Riyad Ullar says: I am from a simple estate, I was surprised by paved roads with cars and sewage, I saw something that I was told that his name is a touch-screen mobile phone, something similar to the stories of the jinn that I used to hear. The story of Google Drive, so you mentioned to me that it is a motor that looks like a car engine, and if I mention a Facebook page, a page of my notebook comes to my mind.