Far' Falastine (), also known as Branch 235, was a prison operated by Military Intelligence Directorate of

Ba'athist Syria Ba'athist Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic (SAR), was the Syrian state between 1963 and 2024 under the One-party state, one-party rule of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Syria Region, Syrian regional branch of the Ba'ath Party (Syri ...

under the charge of Brig. Gen. Kamal Hassan between 2017 and 2020, located in

Damascus Damascus ( , ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in the Levant region by population, largest city of Syria. It is the oldest capital in the world and, according to some, the fourth Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. Kno ...

, notorious for accounts of

torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons including corporal punishment, punishment, forced confession, extracting a confession, interrogational torture, interrogation for information, or intimid ...

, coercive

interrogation Interrogation (also called questioning) is interviewing as commonly employed by law enforcement officers, military personnel, intelligence agencies, organized crime syndicates, and terrorist organizations with the goal of eliciting useful informa ...

, and deplorable conditions related by its former detainees. The Branch was established in 1969 as the liaison between the Ba'athist Syrian regime and the various Palestinian entities permitted to operate in Syria (

Fatah Fatah ( ; ), formally the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (), is a Palestinian nationalist and Arab socialist political party. It is the largest faction of the confederated multi-party Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and ...

as-Sa'iqa As-Sa'iqa (), officially known as Vanguard for the Popular Liberation War – Lightning Forces, () is a Palestinian Ba'athist political and military faction created by Syria. It is linked to the Palestinian branch of the Syrian-led Ba'ath Pa ...

, DFLP, and PFLP). Although it has been associated with torture at least since 1990, the prison gained widespread notoriety in the wake of the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

due to detainees suspected of ties to

terrorist organizations Several national governments and two international organizations have created lists of organizations that they designate as terrorist. The following list of designated terrorist groups lists groups designated as terrorist by current and former ...

being sent there through

extraordinary rendition Extraordinary rendition is a euphemism, euphemistically-named policy of state-sponsored abduction in a foreign jurisdiction and transfer to a third state. The best-known use of extraordinary rendition is in a United States-led program during th ...

s, primarily by the United States, as a means of outsourcing torture. The detention center is reportedly quite large, run by some 500 employees, but the majority of the reports regarding torture and abusive interrogation focus on the three underground floors.

Conditions

The cells are described as being the size of a

coffin A coffin or casket is a funerary box used for viewing or keeping a corpse, for burial, entombment or cremation. Coffins are sometimes referred to as caskets, particularly in American English. A distinction is commonly drawn between "coffins" a ...

, or 2 by 1.5 meters. The cells are infested with cockroaches, fleas, rats, mice, and lice. The scarce amount of food given to the prisoners causes extreme weight loss. Prisoners are given one bottle for urine and another for drinking water. Detainees are reportedly allowed out of their cells for a few minutes to use the restroom three times per day, except on Fridays when a longer break is allowed to take a shower and do laundry. Access to the prison yard for natural sunlight is limited to ten minutes per month. Medical care is denied completely as a matter of routine.

Sexual violence

The prison officers frequently threaten sexual violence, particularly

gang rape In scholarly literature and criminology, gang rape, also called serial gang rape, party rape, group rape, or multiple perpetrator rape,Ullman, S. E. (2013). 11 Multiple perpetrator rape victimization. Handbook on the Study of Multiple Perpetrato ...

, and occasionally carry it out.

Beating

Methods of torture include the "German chair" (a metal chair frame used to stretch the spine), the "dulab" or "tire method" (in which the prisoner is made to place his head, legs, and arms through a car tire in order to immobilize him while he is beaten by the interrogator), "shabeh" hanging (where the detainee is suspended from the ceiling from by his wrists such that his toes are barely touching the ground), "falaqa" (where the detainee is laid on his back, his legs are lifted at a 90-degree angle, and the soles of his feet are beaten), electrocution, and others.

Former detainees

Maher Arar Maher Arar () (born 1970) is a telecommunications engineer with dual Syrian and Canadian citizenship who has resided in Canada since 1987. Arar was detained during a layover at John F. Kennedy International Airport in September 2002 on his way ...

Mohammed Haydar Zammar Mohammed Haydar Zammar ( ''Muḥammad Ḥaydar Zammār'') (born 1961) is a Syrian-German militant who served as an important al-Qaida recruiter, and is currently a member of the Islamic State. He claims to have recruited many of the organizers ...

* Abdullah Almalki *

Nizar Nayyouf Nizar Nayyouf (also Nayuf or Nayouf; ; born 29 May 1962) is a Syrian journalist, human rights activist, and dissident. He was one of the founding members of the Committee for the Defence of Democratic Freedom, a banned political organization in ...

* Abbas Khan *

Ahmad El-Maati Ahmad Abou El-Maati () (born October 1, 1964) is a Canadian citizen who was arrested, tortured, and detained for two and a half years in Syrian and Egyptian prisons, as a result of deficient information sharing by Canadian law enforcement officia ...

* Muayyed Nureddin * Saïd Arif

References

Via – ("Far' Falastin Prison is like an iceberg. The dangerous part lies hidden under the surface... From the ground floor, however, a staircase winds down into the dark basement vault, the torture wing ... This underground section makes Far' Falastin one of the world's most notorious prisons, a mixture between

Alcatraz Alcatraz Island () is a small island about 1.25 miles offshore from San Francisco in San Francisco Bay, California, near the Golden Gate Strait. The island was developed in the mid-19th century with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fo ...

and

Abu Ghraib Abu Ghraib ( or ; ) is a city in the Baghdad Governorate of Iraq, located just west of Baghdad's city center, or northwest of Baghdad International Airport. It has a population of 189,000 (2003). The old road to Jordan passes through Abu Ghra ...

.") {{Coord, 33.491501, N, 36.319008, E, display=title Buildings and structures in Damascus Prisons in Syria Torture in Syria Prison rape Ba'athist Syria Syrian war crimes United States military prisoner abuse scandals Extraordinary rendition program Gang rape in Asia Syria–United States military relations Military history of Damascus United States war crimes in Syria