This post is in partnership with Worldcrunch, a new global news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. The article below was originally published in Le Monde.
Friends tried to stop me. “You have enough contacts in Damascus to write your articles. Why won’t you use your network?” one of them said. But I wouldn’t listen. Relying on my network, I argued, implied obtaining the same information from the same witnesses of the three-week long uprising. Later, as agents of the Syrian intelligence services walked inside the Domino caf to arrest me, my friend’s warning ominously echoed in my head.
Half an hour earlier, a young woman had called me on my cell phone to offer me information. She asked me to meet her in a caf on Bab Touma square — on April 9, at precisely 5:30 p.m. Seven stout men arrived instead. They handcuffed me and took me to my apartment where they ran a search.
The man tasked with keeping an eye on me is as big and strong as a bull, but he tries to act friendly, almost caring: he makes me drink tea by gingerly holding the cup to my lips, he lights a cigarette for me. After asking me a mishmash of questions, and seizing my computer and other material, my captors shoved me inside of a taxi. They forced my head down between my knees, but a propagandistic banner on the side of the road tells me we are heading towards the southern part of Damascus. Our final destination, as I would learn after my release — 24 days later, is Kufar Sousseh, the headquarters of the Syrian intelligence services.
Once inside, I am taken into a large second-floor office for my second interrogation. Strange questions are fired my way. “Do you know Osama bin Laden?” they asked me.
“Were you invited to the White House during your stay in the United States?” They think I am relaxed. Maybe a little too relaxed.
After two hours of questioning, the door opens to receive a man everyone greets with visible respect. The man shouts at me. “You are going to speak,” he says. “Because if you don’t, I’ll cut your balls off and tear your heart out with my bare hands!” He slaps me so hard I fall off the chair. He then turns his back on me and leaves the room. I understand at that point I am in for serious beating.
At first, my interrogator’s repeated slaps to my face fail to trigger any response on my part. Enraged, the man turns around me with a dark smile on his face and an electric cattle prod in his hand. He asks me questions about my activities and about my identity. His next blow is so violent that my dental bridge instantly flies out of my mouth. My phone suddenly starts ringing; the number on the screen suggests the call is made from Saudi Arabia. “Who is this?” the man asks. “A Palestinian friend gone to visit her family,” I reply.
“Liar!” he screams. “You are in contact with Bandar bin Sultan [chief of the Saudi intelligence services]!” More slaps and kicks follow. No matter what I say, my tormentors accuse me of lying. Preferring their own paranoid scenarios, they say I went to Turkey not to write a story about legislative elections, but in order “to meet NATO American officials.” They also believe that I have been giving journalism classes at Antonins University in Lebanon because “I am linked to Samir Geagea.” A top Lebanese military official, Geagea is known for his anti-Syrian views.
