Photograph Source: khamenei.ir – CC BY 4.0
Unlike many privileged kids around the globe, including those who had or have the luxury to be brought up calmly, and nourished physically and mentally in a playful and stress-free environment, I came of age witnessing the horrors of the Israeli occupation, reading deeply stressful, if not deeply traumatizing stories and books about the torture of Palestinian detainees in notorious Israeli jails. One of the books that affected me deeply during my adolescence years was With My Own Eyes by Felicia Langer. In the book, Langer documented with vivid details the methods the Israeli prison system devised to torture Palestinians. From the typical beating and breaking of bones to inserting boiled eggs into the rectums of detainees. All were documented by one of the most decorated human rights lawyers who was given some of the highest human rights and state awards in Germany (in her latter years).
Why now this piece of history? The stories of political detainees or those of any type of prisoners always touch a sensitive cord within a human. Even if a detainee was a murderer, the inhumane treatment and torture of a human creates a sense of revulsion, anguish, and a deep sense of insecurity. From the creative torture techniques of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabel in Spain, where Muslims were put inside an iron bull with nostrils so when placed above fire, the smoke blows from the nostrils resembling a bellowing charging bull, to stories of maltreatment of inmates in the US prison system where torture and rape of inmates take place by other inmates under the patronage and support of the prison system itself, all creates that deep sense of revulsion and abhorrence. So one can sense the heightened sense of revulsion one feels when imagining the prison system of a brutal dictatorship such as the one that is no more in Syria. Or the ones that the CIA supported during its dirty wars in Latin and South America.
But were the torture techniques of the former Syrian regime a secret? Perhaps the efficacy of those techniques was will-document and understood, if not admired, by the US government who chose, in 2002, to send Maher Arar to Syria against his own will, for no other purpose but to be interrogated using “advanced” techniques that the US personnel could not perform. The shipping of Arar to Syria took place under the infamous Extraordinary Rendition program, which sent people the US detained (i.e., kidnapped) in the high seas to be interrogated at secret sites around the world, with the assumption that the interrogation would involve torture. The same Syrian government of Bashar Al-Assad, who inherited the torture techniques from his father’s reign, was heavily collaborating with the US on its so-called War on Terror in the early 2000s.
This background and much more is important to lay the ground for the concerted deep state media and its worldwide affiliates to focus the world’s attention after the fall of the Assad regime on those who were languishing in his prisons. The suffering of political detainees under the former Assad regime, and more broadly, the creative torture techniques of brutal Middle Eastern regimes such as that of Sisi in Egypt, were nothing new to many Middle Easterners, and to many “think-tank” type specialists of the West, such as Stewart Seldowitz who, in November 2023, threatened a fearful New York food vendor with sending him back to Egypt to have his nails plucked one by one (https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/11/30/calling-for-genocide/.)
But has the western media and the governments’ run Middle Eastern media become sympathetic to the plight of political detainees inside the brutal regimes of the Middle East, including those under US proxy banana republics such as Mahmoud Abbas’s brutal Palestinian Authority?
Starting with CNN, which led the charge, along with Qatar’s professional money-soaked media empire such as Al-Jazeera, Al-Quds Al-Arabi (alquds.co.uk), and others who are within the Qatari money orbit, and, naturally, Arabic language American Saudi media conglomerates, the narrative setters post Syrian “liberation” focused on the plight of the detainees. Stories of exaggeration and fairytales flooded the media. Claims that tens of thousands were detained underground in the infamous Saydnaya prison started to surface, with CNN and Aljazeera broadcasting efforts to excavate the concrete floors to rescue alleged “tens of thousands” of detainees. Participating in the media foray were shadowy figures such as Mohammad Ghassan Aboud (https://pulse.mubasher.info/news/variety/73396/%D9%85%D9%83%D8%A7%D9%81%D8%A3%D8%A9-100-%D8%A3%D9%84%D9%81-%D8%AF%D9%88%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%B1-%D9%84%D9%85%D9%86-%D9%8A%D9%81%D9%83-%D8%B4%D9%81%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D8%A8%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%B3%D8%AC%D9%86-%D8%B5%D9%8A%D8%AF%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A7)
offering awards of tens of thousands of dollars to anyone who would provide codes to open the gates of those secret detention chambers (if there is a gate, one can bring a jackhammer to crack it open, unless it’s a nuclear-hardened several feet thick bunkers). The exaggerations frenzy and lies were easily detectable for those who understand both English and Arabic. One reporter claimed that Saydnaya prison was purely for political detainees and claiming that a banner on the prison stated that people can only enter the prison but never leave it, while another stated that the upper floors housed criminal of minor offenses and were there for short periods of time. An Aljazeera reporter (amongst many that mysteriously flooded Syria within a very short period) was asking one of the presumed liberated detainees about the Red ward of the prison (which is allegedly the most notorious in the prison). The detainee, to the disgruntlement of the reporter who was hoping for a different answer, answered “it is “upstairs”. The reporter was presumably expecting to hear that it was buried underground.
What matter is that the media blitz by the deep state outlets and the Qatari and Saudi media, which were instrumental in peddling a deluge of lies about the war in Syria (including the claim that the Syrian government attacked its own people with chemical weapons, which later turned out to be the work of the “revolutionaries”). The nonsurprise (to many who follow Middle Eastern conflicts closely), came several days later, on the 10th of December, when the Syrian Civil Defence issued a statement stating that after extensive search using dogs and other equipment, that they could not find any prisoners underground, and that the search was concluded! Part of the Syrian civil defence statement stated, “and the civil defence emphasizes that its special unit searched all sections and wards and facilities of the prison, and its basements, courtyards and external yards, using people that had full knowledge of the prison layout, and could not find any evidence indicating the presence of undiscovered secret underground wards.”
Of course, the conclusion of the civil defence teams was not the “right news” that the same outlets wanted to hear, nor to report. (Typically, such news shows up in the form of a lowkey tweet with equally lowkey media coverage.) This reminds me of the story of the incubators that was peddled by the Western media during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990; a story that was the work of public relations (i.e., deception) guns-for-hire firms. Once the lie is perpetrated and has the suitable and impactful outlets to propagate it, the efficacy is maximized. Later, when it is discovered and proven that it was a lie and the product of state-crafted deception, the media that reported the first lie would not there to give its rebuttal the same prominent coverage–Old rotten craft, but fully effective.
The deception continued unabated. AlHadath, a Saudi media channel, conducted a seemingly staged interview with a Syrian boy who is presented as disparately scouring the compounds of Saydnaya prison allegedly in search of his missing father. The interviewer asked the boy “how old are you?” The boy replied “10 years old”. Then the interviewer asked him “for how long you have not seen your father?” The boy answered “14 years.” The man next to the boy, his handler, immediately intervened to correct the boy that it was 10 years, not 14 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoW59Zes3qE).
All this perfectly concerted media blitz, deception and lies, all seemingly deeply sympathetic with the plight of the former regime’s detainees, was happening while Israel was obliterating the entire armed forces of Syria. The Syrian navy, the Syrian air force, government research labs, all strategic assets, and much more were all obliterated by Israel’s intensive bombardment that, according to Israeli officials, was unprecedented in the history of the Zionist State. CNN chose to refer to this unprecedented attack on the assets of Syria using headlines such as “Israel bombed Syria”. Aljazeera on the other hand, equally decided to tone down the massive Israeli bombardment of Syria’s naval and air force assets, choosing headlines such as “because of these reasons, Israel moved in Syria after the fall of Assad” which were carefully crafted to dilute any sense of alarm at Isarel’s massive bombardment. BBC, a British-government bank-rolled media organization, decided that Israel is not part of the forces and countries that control part of Syrian territories (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2ex7ek9pyeo). The Western media referred to Israel’s land grab and occupation of additional Syrian strategic territory as mere “capture”. “Occupation” is a term that is purely political deserving of Russian actions only.
To top it off, Israel occupied additional and extremely strategic chunks of the Syrian territory. Such occupation was not sufficient news to even solicit any denunciation from Al-Jolani (who chooses now to be called by his other real name Ahmed Al Sharaa), the new de-facto emir of Syria. (Emir is the “Islamic” Khilafat’s designation for someone of absolute and high authority, the equivalent of “emperor”). Al-Jolani was one of the most wanted terrorists by the US just a week ago. The same “head-chopper” of ISIS and its derivatives, has now been transformed into a stateman, with CNN, the US Deep state media outlet, granting him a major public relations boost with a far-reaching interview.
The US must have struck a deal with Al-Jolani. If Israel celebrated the downfall of the Assad regime and the removal of any military threat to its security by neighboring Syria, what would have justified the obliteration of the entire Syrian state’s military assets? In a recent statement, Al-Jolani made it clear that he has no conflict with Israel. That was the trigger that the US needed to start the transformation of Al-Jolani from the most wanted terrorist that he was few days ago, to the groomed stateman that “we can work with to advance peace in the region.” Incidentally, while “groomed” is used as a euphemism for changing one’s old habits or refining them, the literal meaning applies to Al-Jolani since he already dropped the “Islamic” white turban and has trimmed his thick beard, both of which were needed over the past 10 years to warrant his elevation to an Emir in the eyes of the multitudes of Central Asian dye-hard Saudi-style Wahabi-Salafi fanatics.
If CNN et al., are deeply concerned about the plight of political prisoners, they can request visits to the notorious Egyptian prison system, or to the Saudi prison system, especially the Ha’er prison facility outside Riyadh, where mere opinions, including objecting to the presence of erotic dancers in the midst of a Muslim conservative country, qualifies you to be deserving of its hospitality and long-term residency).
Since the US trained and funds the banana republic of Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, CNN should have no problem requesting visits to the notorious detention and torture facilities of Abbas, where a mere one week visit to those facilities is sufficient to create permanent mental damage.
When a person takes the stand in a court, the judge asks the person to “tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” Choosing one or two is sufficient ground for deception and deceit. Deep state and state-craft deception has been put into high gear to create the narrative in post-Assad Syria, focusing on the plight of the Syrian detainees. All media outlets operating in Syria could have also documented the obliteration of the Syrian state military assets, a massive bombardment of the entire armed forces assets of an entire country that is arguably unprecedented in history.
We should only expect a heavier does of deception in the days and months to come.
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