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DESPITE 15 MONTHS of torture and ill treatment in Syria’s notorious prisons, Ola, a young activist, grudgingly supports holding peace talks with the regime that jailed her.
The 23-year-old, with pale skin, short hair and a wandering gaze that betrays her trauma, emerged from detention last month.
Her experience, which she shares with war-hardened maturity, reflects the evolution of a March 2011 revolt that morphed from peaceful protest against President Bashar al-Assad to a war that is estimated to have claimed more than 130,000 lives.
Ola supported the opposition’s decision to attend peace talks earlier this week with the regime that imprisoned her, and believes they must help bring relief to the war’s millions of victims.
Speaking to AFP in southern Turkey, where she now lives in exile, Ola says she joined the revolt against the Assad family’s four-decade rule because “we wanted to live like other human beings, fearless and free to think for ourselves”.
She filmed protests and smuggled medicine into besieged suburbs of Damascus, her home city.
Rebel fighter
A driving instructor by trade, she risked her life transporting some 150 army defectors to safety in Jordan.
And as Syrians took up arms after a brutal crackdown, she donned a balaclava mask and joined the rebels fighting in the southern province of Daraa.
“Only the chief of the battalion knew I was a girl,” she smiled.
But as the war grew more brutal and protracted, corruption and self-interest seeped into the ranks of the opposition, and in October 2012, a fellow activist turned Ola in.
“She heard I’d received funding for my activities. She got greedy and betrayed me to the security forces,” she explained.
No human interaction
Ola was captured, beaten and taken to a military intelligence headquarters in Daraa, where she was held in solitary confinement for 25 days.
“I was beaten. I had no human interaction there, except with my interrogator and the guy who would take me to the bathroom,” she said.
From there, she was moved to the feared Palestine Branch in Damascus, where she was beaten again and placed in solitary confinement for four days.
I was freezing and afraid. I could hear the screams of people being tortured, all the time.
“Twenty-four hours a day, a very bright light was kept on in the cell. The world was over for me. I felt I would never see my family again.”
Terrifying tale of torture
The most terrifying stage of her ordeal began with the appearance of “Lakhdar Brahimi”, a green cable fitted with a metal screw used to lash inmates.
The device is named after the UN-Arab League envoy who organised this week’s Geneva peace talks. His first name means “green” in Arabic.
Ola says her interrogator then subjected her for six days to the “shabah”, a torture method whereby the wrists are tied to the ceiling with the feet barely touching the floor.
Then the interrogator brought electric-shock cables.
“Every time he’d come for me, my wounds had not yet healed from the last session,” she said.
Ola was then thrown in a communal cell where she was deprived of a proper diet and medicine to treat her diabetes.
It was more than a year before she would be released.
“When I got home last month, my siblings, all older than me, fell at my feet. It was like I had been born again.”
The aim?
Ola’s dreams of a different Syria have been tempered by her nightmare in custody.
While she still believes in the ideals of the uprising, and that Assad must leave, her main hope for the peace talks is relief for opposition areas under army siege.
“We must think of the women and children, and the elderly in besieged areas who have no food,” she said.
“In the end, there will be justice.”
Ola also hopes for the release of her friends, among the countless Syrians held in jails where rights groups say torture is endemic.
She is happy the rebels have taken up arms against the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), whose bid for dominance and abuses angered many opponents.
But she sees opposition disunity as the main reason why Syria’s revolt has not borne fruit.
“Instead of being one hand fighting the regime, there are a hundred (rebel) groups, each with their own ideology and funding. I wish people would remember why they rose up in the first place,” Ola said.
“I still believe in freedom. It’s reality that gets me down.”
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“I still believe in freedom. It’s reality that gets me down.”
Great quote regardless
this fictitious woman didn’t make any statement.
It’s all very sad to see. Syria was a nice country with lots of good people. I was lucky enough to spend a few days there about 10 years ago & honestly never saw the potential for something like this to happen there.
It’s hard to know what will happen or how it’ll be resolved. It’s certainly no longer just a Syrian war now but a proxy Iran v Saudi Arabia war to be the dominant Islamic nation in the region.
The first priority is to ensure the trouble doesn’t spread to Jordan & Lebanon & ignite the whole region. Then to try & find some kind of solution to stop the fighting within Syria. How??????
but of course among some Irish “experts” on the Middle-East it’s all the Israelis fault obviously. & if you can’t blame the Jews what’s the point in caring?
Hold on, how old is she again
And you have proof of it being fiction?
23. That would have made her 19-20 yrs old when the first protests started.
I still believe in Dealz its the reality of Brown Thomas that gets me down !!!! Dubious article
It is more to do with the revolt being a foreign invasion of savages that it has not bore fruit, and as for her, it’s a sorry situation that she was misled it’s unfortunate but war isn’t pretty, imagine she was on the other side she would have been raped, beheaded, eaten, had to watch her family members executed etc.
Golden selective memory per chance?
This all started with Peaceful Protests for a more open and Democratic Syria being attacked by Assads thugs using live rounds. With Children being murdered for painting anti Assad slogans. With the Funerals of those the were murdered being attacked again and again.
You can try ignore the history of the situation but you can’t change it.
Petr, I thought you’d have more sense than to be posting up some rags propaganda, it was last year that the western players in this proxy invasion started buying the natural resources from the terrorists in their stronghold, pure spin again from trashy newspapers.
Thanks Mick I’ll ignore Sky News’ history of the Syrian invasion.
‘supports holding peace talks with the regime that jailed her’
More peopaganda, Assad has the support of the vast majority of Syrians.
The journal needs to stop accepting propaganda from APN which is a notorious propaganda machine.
Why can’t the journalist hire an independent foreign affairs journo, email me, i’ll do it.
As for this girl, She is a terrorist, trying to overthrow a much loved leader.
Go Assad.
‘propaganda’
What a lady
she’s a terrorist, a child murderer, a mass murderer.
Both sides in that conflict are equally as barbaric. No hero’s, just idiots killing in the name of religion.
You obviously have no grasp on the situation at all, please refrain from commenting on Syria. Thanks in advance.
Am I wrong in my statement that both sides are barbaric??
You are right when you say there is barbarism on both sides. The second half of your comment is mistaken though.
The regime is killing in an attempt to maintain their power, some rebel factions are killing to try and get that power for themselves and other rebel factions are killing to change that power from a secular form to a theocratic form.
The attack on Adra in late December typifies the MO of these ‘rebels’, they ride into town in the dead of night, take out any sort of defence it has and begin to massacre civilians, in Adras case bakery workers were burned alive in ovens, young males who showed defiance and openly showed support for the government were decapitated and there heads hung from trees for all to see, the government then has to react and send forces to relieve the town of the terrorists, and then must wait to hear of the next town to be attacked, this is hardly the way of a popular revolution, everyone inside Syria knows it and this video sums up why people this side of the world don’t…http://youtu.be/JKjsjEJDMUk
It happened in Maloulaa not so long ago, one of the last Christian Towns to speak the language of Christ, Aramaic, razed to the ground, the very orphanage that Assad and his wife visit every year was attacked and nuns kidnapped.
Lattakia governate which has the largest concentration of Alawites, has seen some of most barbaric attacks, children cut from their mothers and hung from trees by their umbilical chords is just one of the examples. So don’t say both sides are as bad as each other, it is most definitely not a correct statement.
And the idiots killing in the name of religion are the ‘rebels’, the Army is fighting to defend it’s country’s citizens, the rebels are paid by outside influences, money that is beyond what they could ever imagine ‘earning’ if they were not doing what they are. This is all available for anyone to see on the internet, anyone who can see the BBC, SKY and CNN are not telling the truth about Syria can see this for themselves.
Still pushing the Rebel narrative Patrick? Still trying to figure out if you’re just naive or a lover of all things imperial.
And Golden you are still supporting a murderous regime. Forget what daddy Assad did? And the present Assad’s use of nerve agents against civilians? And the indiscriminate bombing of civilians by aircraft and artillery?
Oh you haven’t heard Mick have you? A former UN inspector and Professors at Massachusetts Institute Technology have studied the UNs report on that chemical attack and more or less rubbished the claims by John Kerry & co. that it was launched from Government territory, and indiscriminate air raids? How do you know this?
Who are we ‘meeting’ exactly?
A figment of a propagandists imagination?
Syrian rebel? You mean Syrian terrorist.
Assad will put manners on those jihadist nutters !
Or, maybe he’s collaborating with them.
the telegraph, mi6 for short.
Indeed. When you don’t like the message, shoot the messenger.
Wasn’t easy to keep my mouth shut
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