Robert Fisk intervjuar Mukhabaratfångar
Som förste västjournalist har Robert Fisk fått möjlighet att intervjua fångar i ett av den syriska säkerhetstjänsten Mukhabarats fängelser:
Robert Fisk: Syria's road from jihad to prison
Fisk får prata med fyra fångar – två syrier, en fransk-algerier och en turk – i enrum. Vissa frågor kan nog inte ställas eller besvaras trots det, men det är i alla fall en intressant läsning:
Mohamed Amin Ali al-Abdullah är en 26-årig läkarstudent från Deir el-Zour:
When the uprising began in Syria last year, Mohamed said, he was advised by the ”sheikh” and two other men to participate in anti-regime demonstrations.
Around this time, Mohamed said, he was introduced to a Salafist called ”Al-Hajer” who asked him to help in his movement's ”medical and logistic support – to hide men wanted by the authorities and to find safe houses”.
”They took me into their circle. I left my mind 'outside' at this period and then I recognised that this group was al-Qa'ida.”
Jamel Amer al-Khodoud är en 48-årig fransk-algerier från Marseille:
He was, he said, a ”moderate Salafist”, but in the Turkish refugee camps had met a Libyan sheikh, many Tunisians and a Yemeni imam ”who gave me lessons in jihad”. He crossed the Syrian border with a shotgun, and with other men had attacked military checkpoints and slept rough in abandoned houses and a mosque in the mountains above Latakia.
Han inser dock snabbt att kriget inte är något för honom. Han försöker därför ta sig tillbaka till Turkiet till fots, men grips av misstänksamma bönder.
Den tredje fången är en syrisk imam, sheikh Ahmed Ghalibo, som blivit desillusionerad av allt våld han sett:
... the sheikh said he had been appalled at how the groups had liquidated all who disagreed with them, merely on suspicion, ”cutting the bodies up, decapitating them and throwing them in sewage”. He said he had witnessed seven such murders; indeed, the disposal of corpses in sewage has been a common occurrence in Damascus.
Den fjärde fången är en turk som tränats i ett talibanläger:
Cuma Öztürk comes from the south-eastern Turkish city of Gaziantep, and crossed into Syria after months of training, he said, in a Taliban camp on the Afghan-Pakistan border. He could not speak Pashtu – or Arabic – but had left behind his pregnant wife Mayuda and their three-year old daughter in Gaziantep to travel to Damascus.
