UNIVERSITY OF WHISPERS - Assad's Prison

Wanted Dead or Alive
War Criminal Bashar al-Assad

Assad is a monster and should die by his own methods, in the 'university of whispers.'

"Silenced at ‘the university of whispers,’ an Assad prison survivor can now tell his story" PBS NewsHour 3/19/2019

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SUMMARY:  Syrian teen Omar Alshogre was arrested and jailed for participating in a protest.  He survived three years of torture in a compound referred to as “the university of whispers” because its prisoners were forbidden to speak.  After fleeing to Turkey and then Sweden, Alshogre is finally able to share his story of the Assad regime's brutal crimes.  Special correspondent Malcolm Brabant reports.

HUMAN RIGHTS - High-Tech Intersect Investigations

"A new generation of human rights investigators turns to high-tech methods" PBS NewsHour 2/13/2017

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SUMMARY:  Humanitarian crises like those in Syria's Aleppo sometimes make headlines.  But how do we identify such atrocities when they are occurring thousands of miles away?  A new program at UC Berkeley is training students to leverage social media, geolocation and other high-tech tools to document human rights abuses, and their findings have been brought to the UN.  Special correspondent Cat Wise reports.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  As we near the gruesome sixth anniversary of the war in Syria, daily documents of the carnage there now flood the Internet.  Photos and videos posted by both civilians and combatants catalog the shocking depths of human cruelty and possible war crimes.

Now human rights investigators are increasingly turning to the Internet to track what's happening, not only in Syria, but in other conflict zones.

As part of our Breakthroughs coverage of invention and innovation, special correspondent Cat Wise reports on a new university program training students to become human rights investigators in the digital age.

And a warning:  This story contains some disturbing images.

CAT WISE (NewsHour):  For decades, human rights investigators have relied on tools like shovels and backhoes to uncover mass graves and mass atrocities in places like Bosnia, Iraq, and Rwanda.  But in today's smartphone-filled world, videos and images of people killed or suffering thousands of miles away take only a couple of clicks to find on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter.

The front lines of human rights work have shifted in the digital age, and a new generation of investigators is beginning to employ high-tech tools.

STUDENT:  We can probably screen-shot that.

STUDENT:  Yes.

STUDENT:  And reverse-image it.

STUDENT:  Yes.

STUDENT:  And we should look up the name of that pharmacy.

STUDENT:  Can anyone translate that?

CAT WISE:  These students are part of the recently launched Human Rights Investigations Lab at the University of California, Berkeley's Human Rights Center.

The university and partner organization Amnesty International are training the students to verify videos and other publicly available social media content coming out of areas like Syria, where human rights violations have been occurring.

For the first time, students are using open source investigation methods used previously by journalists and human rights professionals.

YOUSTINA YOUSSEF, Student:  Oh, those are uniforms.

CAT WISE:  Youstina Youssef is a 20-year-old political science major in the program.  She's become a highly skilled digital detective.  And her native language, Arabic, also comes in handy.  Youssef grew up in Cairo, Egypt.  She and her family are Coptic Christians, a religious minority in Egypt.  They came to the U.S. in 2010 shortly before the revolution began.

SYRIA - House of Death

"Amnesty documents 'human slaughterhouse' in Assad's Syria" PBS NewsHour 2/7/2017

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SUMMARY:  Somewhere between 5,000 and 13,000 people were tortured and executed at one Syrian military prison between 2011 and 2015, according to Amnesty International.  A new report alleges that officials at the high level of government approved the killings.  William Brangham discusses the disturbing details and larger implications with Amnesty's Sunjeev Bery.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Amnesty International has just issued a report documenting what it says is clear evidence that the Assad regime in Syria has been illegally imprisoning, torturing and murdering political opponents.

William Brangham has more.

And a warning:  Some of the details here are disturbing.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):  Amnesty's report says that somewhere between 5,000 and 13,000 people were tortured and executed at one military prison outside Damascus between 2011 and 2015.

Amnesty alleges that officials at the highest level of the Syrian government approved the killings, as did the grand mufti of Syria, the highest ranking religious figure in the country.

I'm joined now by Sunjeev Bery.  He's Amnesty's director of advocacy for the Middle East and North Africa.

SUNJEEV BERY, Amnesty International:  Thank you for having me.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  Very, very troubling reading in this report and the stories of the people who were tortured and executed at this prison.

Can you tell me, who were these people?

SUNJEEV BERY:  There were thousands of civilians, as well as some ex-military officers, who are held at Saydnaya prison in Saydnaya, Syria.

We estimate that between 10,000 and 20,000 people are held there now.  And for years, on a weekly basis, as many as 50 people have been hanged in mass executions by the Syrian government at this prison.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  And are these people who are picked up — what are the crimes that they're accused of?

SUNJEEV BERY:  Many of them are perceived to be opposition to the government, although when you're doing this kind of mass arrest, mass torture and miss execution, who knows what the individual people's backgrounds are?

And, of course, peaceful, nonviolent opposition to a government is certainly not a crime.  But with that background, many of them are subjected to forced confessions through extraordinarily brutal torture, and once that confession is put via ink to paper, then the execution process begins.