But a friend had warned: "You have enough contacts in Damascus to write your articles, you must lock your network." But lock your network, it is ordered to turn round with the same witnesses and the same actors in this revolt began three weeks ago. His warning came back as an echo when agents of the Syrian intelligence services came into the cafe for me to challenge Domino.
Half an hour earlier, a young woman called me on my cell phone. She offered to give me information. Appointment is given at 17 30 pm, Saturday, April 9, in a café in Bab Touma. A few minutes later, I'm kidnapped by seven men of strong build. Handcuffed, I am led to my house where they conducted a search.
He instructed me to monitor is structured like a bull, but shows affable, attentive same: I am drinking tea in the cup gently on my lips and turns me a cigarette. After a messy examination and seizure of my hardware, I boarded a taxi. It puts me head between his knees, but I guess a banner recognizing propaganda already noticed that we are heading south of Damascus.
More specifically, Kufar Sousseh, headquarters of the intelligence services. But I do not know formally that twenty-four days later, my release. Here begins my second interview in a large office on the second floor. It begins with unusual questions: "Do you know Osama Bin Laden?" , "Have you been received at the White House during your stay in the United States?" We find myself relaxed.
A little too much. Two hours of questioning later, the door opens to let a man that everyone greets him with respect. It throws me: "You'll talk! If you do not talk, I'll cut your testicles and removing you heart with my own hands!" A slap project myself off my chair. He goes out and then I understand that the green light has been given to me to beat.
The blows that fall upon my face let me first of marble, which puts me out of her executioner. The man turns around me, a smile to the lips and an electric baton in hand. He asks me about my activities and my identity. He hits me with such power this time it stalled my dental bridge from the first slap.
Suddenly, my phone rings. The call number indicates Saudi Arabia. "Who is it?" A Palestinian friend party visit his family. "Liar!" He yells. You have relations with Bandar Bin Sultan (head of Saudi intelligence services)! " Slaps. Kicks. All my answers are punctuated with a "liar", followed by a sudden and accompanied by a paranoid assumption.
According to them, I went to Turkey, not for reporting on the elections, but "to meet with American officers in NATO." I teach journalism at the University of the Antonines in Lebanon, because "I work closely with Samir Geagea (Lebanese Forces leader and notorious anti-Syrian)". I discover with amazement that my captors are intoxicated by their own propaganda.
Do not they know that Saudi Arabia has moved closer to Syria, which Damascus has supported the military invasion of Saudi Arabia to Bahrain? Have they not heard the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, portraying President Bashar Al-Assad in the guise of "a real reformer? They relocate me in my chair, blindfold me and set son on several electrical parts of my body, including genitalia, and I'm terrified that a shock will not come.
It was a simulation. What I took for the electrodes were the cables of my computer. They mean to me that if I want to taste it, they have all necessary equipment. That's when I decided to reveal the pseudonym under which I work. Now I'm petrified at the thought under torture to reveal the names of all those I gained the confidence to obtain their testimony.
I have one hope: to be released before they have read my articles and translated (in Syria, Khaled Sid Mohand has collaborated in the world and France Culture). After all, no foreign journalist has been detained for more than forty-eight hours. I joined shortly after a group of Syrian prisoners who all bear the scars of a beating.
We are then taken to our respective cells, mine is number 22. It is through this number as I am now identified. I go to sleep before being awakened by screams. They are those of the executioner: an examination has begun. The only words I can distinguish are insults and a "who?" But I know from meeting with detainees before my arrest, the objective of these sessions is less torture to extract information to punish, humiliate and terrorize.
Soon the voice of the torturer is covered by the shrieks of the inmate will crescendo. I feel my heartbeat accelerate, I am paralyzed by fear. It is the goal. Third examination. A few slaps punctuated by insults, and it signifies to me that I no longer have an interpreter. "Tell me everything.
- What do you know? - Everything! Since the beginning ... since your birth." The interview ends with the coming of a man with an angular face that begs me to my interrogator "Finish." Her face expresses the hatred and anger. How can he hate me so spontaneously? I can not help but think of the contrast between the kindness and the nonchalance of Damascus and the concentrate of violence and cruelty free, which I attend now.
That may be a terrifying illustration of the Leviathan, Hobbes to: no street violence, the state it is assumed the monopoly ... The fourth interview took place the next day, Monday, April 11 - last I remember. The lack of daylight and time cues to lose track of time. My interrogator greets me with a contrite smile and explains that no one will hand on me.
He asks me to translate the notes I had forgotten to destroy and end his interrogation by a "job" Syrian spy on my friends in exchange for a residence permit and a certification in good and due form . The days and weeks following a rhythmic back-and-forth of prisoners arrested in raids carried out at events.
It is my understanding that the wind of protest continues to spread to other cities and other districts of Damascus. They are tortured and released after an average of ten days. I try to count the days with breakfast, but I lose the thread. I try to communicate with inmates, sometimes responsible for distributing the food, or open the door to the toilet.
We then have a few seconds to exchange information: "Tomorrow is Friday, they must empty the prison of all prisoners." But hope soon gave way to disappointment. The prison is filled with new inmates, while keeping the old, so, that night, some are piled up to three cells in 2 square meters.
They are tortured in turn, until exhaustion of the executioners. I try to initiate conversation with other inmates, but they are too damaged to carry on a conversation. I met Ali, a recruit of 21. He was arrested for trying to attend the Friday prayer, which is forbidden by military law, particularly in these times of events.
On the day that I believed to be the end of my second week in detention, Ali tells me he heard that we will be released within twenty-four hours. The day does not keep its promises, and I feel in the voice of Ali great sadness that I have not the strength to mitigate. An unusual event is so disturbing the detention center.
After lunch, a sob was heard. The young man whose face I see furtively no more than 20 years. He cries louder and louder, he calls his mother and ask God. While jailers are quick to beat up prisoners at the slightest pretext, this time, they seem moved by the young man. They will just several hours later ask him to cry less strong.
He sobbed for three days. That evening, a new inmate is amazing, because it has no cell: he is condemned to remain standing, blindfolded for three days. Three days during which interrogators and torturers took turns doing crack, without success. I understand he was arrested in possession of CDs containing information considered subversive by the regime.
He is from the north and probably came to Damascus in order to submit this information to one of these networks of online activists who serve as the interface between the insurgents of provincial towns and organizations defending human rights rights, and foreign media. Concerned about the length of my detention, I decided to begin a hunger strike.
The experience is painful, not as a Ramadan sunset and without breaking the fast. Especially since the food is not bad. But to my surprise, when our captors were shown our health-conscious - a doctor went morning and evening with a bag of drugs to treat sick prisoners - and they have not hesitated to use the torture to break the hunger strikes, the guard did not seem concerned about my initiative.
Maybe he knew that his superiors had already decided to release me the next day. It was Tuesday, May 3rd, International Day for Press Freedom. Tenth anniversary of my journalism career. Khaled Sid Mohand Article published in the edition of 29.05.11 
Half an hour earlier, a young woman called me on my cell phone. She offered to give me information. Appointment is given at 17 30 pm, Saturday, April 9, in a café in Bab Touma. A few minutes later, I'm kidnapped by seven men of strong build. Handcuffed, I am led to my house where they conducted a search.
He instructed me to monitor is structured like a bull, but shows affable, attentive same: I am drinking tea in the cup gently on my lips and turns me a cigarette. After a messy examination and seizure of my hardware, I boarded a taxi. It puts me head between his knees, but I guess a banner recognizing propaganda already noticed that we are heading south of Damascus.
More specifically, Kufar Sousseh, headquarters of the intelligence services. But I do not know formally that twenty-four days later, my release. Here begins my second interview in a large office on the second floor. It begins with unusual questions: "Do you know Osama Bin Laden?" , "Have you been received at the White House during your stay in the United States?" We find myself relaxed.
A little too much. Two hours of questioning later, the door opens to let a man that everyone greets him with respect. It throws me: "You'll talk! If you do not talk, I'll cut your testicles and removing you heart with my own hands!" A slap project myself off my chair. He goes out and then I understand that the green light has been given to me to beat.
The blows that fall upon my face let me first of marble, which puts me out of her executioner. The man turns around me, a smile to the lips and an electric baton in hand. He asks me about my activities and my identity. He hits me with such power this time it stalled my dental bridge from the first slap.
Suddenly, my phone rings. The call number indicates Saudi Arabia. "Who is it?" A Palestinian friend party visit his family. "Liar!" He yells. You have relations with Bandar Bin Sultan (head of Saudi intelligence services)! " Slaps. Kicks. All my answers are punctuated with a "liar", followed by a sudden and accompanied by a paranoid assumption.
According to them, I went to Turkey, not for reporting on the elections, but "to meet with American officers in NATO." I teach journalism at the University of the Antonines in Lebanon, because "I work closely with Samir Geagea (Lebanese Forces leader and notorious anti-Syrian)". I discover with amazement that my captors are intoxicated by their own propaganda.
Do not they know that Saudi Arabia has moved closer to Syria, which Damascus has supported the military invasion of Saudi Arabia to Bahrain? Have they not heard the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, portraying President Bashar Al-Assad in the guise of "a real reformer? They relocate me in my chair, blindfold me and set son on several electrical parts of my body, including genitalia, and I'm terrified that a shock will not come.
It was a simulation. What I took for the electrodes were the cables of my computer. They mean to me that if I want to taste it, they have all necessary equipment. That's when I decided to reveal the pseudonym under which I work. Now I'm petrified at the thought under torture to reveal the names of all those I gained the confidence to obtain their testimony.
I have one hope: to be released before they have read my articles and translated (in Syria, Khaled Sid Mohand has collaborated in the world and France Culture). After all, no foreign journalist has been detained for more than forty-eight hours. I joined shortly after a group of Syrian prisoners who all bear the scars of a beating.
We are then taken to our respective cells, mine is number 22. It is through this number as I am now identified. I go to sleep before being awakened by screams. They are those of the executioner: an examination has begun. The only words I can distinguish are insults and a "who?" But I know from meeting with detainees before my arrest, the objective of these sessions is less torture to extract information to punish, humiliate and terrorize.
Soon the voice of the torturer is covered by the shrieks of the inmate will crescendo. I feel my heartbeat accelerate, I am paralyzed by fear. It is the goal. Third examination. A few slaps punctuated by insults, and it signifies to me that I no longer have an interpreter. "Tell me everything.
- What do you know? - Everything! Since the beginning ... since your birth." The interview ends with the coming of a man with an angular face that begs me to my interrogator "Finish." Her face expresses the hatred and anger. How can he hate me so spontaneously? I can not help but think of the contrast between the kindness and the nonchalance of Damascus and the concentrate of violence and cruelty free, which I attend now.
That may be a terrifying illustration of the Leviathan, Hobbes to: no street violence, the state it is assumed the monopoly ... The fourth interview took place the next day, Monday, April 11 - last I remember. The lack of daylight and time cues to lose track of time. My interrogator greets me with a contrite smile and explains that no one will hand on me.
He asks me to translate the notes I had forgotten to destroy and end his interrogation by a "job" Syrian spy on my friends in exchange for a residence permit and a certification in good and due form . The days and weeks following a rhythmic back-and-forth of prisoners arrested in raids carried out at events.
It is my understanding that the wind of protest continues to spread to other cities and other districts of Damascus. They are tortured and released after an average of ten days. I try to count the days with breakfast, but I lose the thread. I try to communicate with inmates, sometimes responsible for distributing the food, or open the door to the toilet.
We then have a few seconds to exchange information: "Tomorrow is Friday, they must empty the prison of all prisoners." But hope soon gave way to disappointment. The prison is filled with new inmates, while keeping the old, so, that night, some are piled up to three cells in 2 square meters.
They are tortured in turn, until exhaustion of the executioners. I try to initiate conversation with other inmates, but they are too damaged to carry on a conversation. I met Ali, a recruit of 21. He was arrested for trying to attend the Friday prayer, which is forbidden by military law, particularly in these times of events.
On the day that I believed to be the end of my second week in detention, Ali tells me he heard that we will be released within twenty-four hours. The day does not keep its promises, and I feel in the voice of Ali great sadness that I have not the strength to mitigate. An unusual event is so disturbing the detention center.
After lunch, a sob was heard. The young man whose face I see furtively no more than 20 years. He cries louder and louder, he calls his mother and ask God. While jailers are quick to beat up prisoners at the slightest pretext, this time, they seem moved by the young man. They will just several hours later ask him to cry less strong.
He sobbed for three days. That evening, a new inmate is amazing, because it has no cell: he is condemned to remain standing, blindfolded for three days. Three days during which interrogators and torturers took turns doing crack, without success. I understand he was arrested in possession of CDs containing information considered subversive by the regime.
He is from the north and probably came to Damascus in order to submit this information to one of these networks of online activists who serve as the interface between the insurgents of provincial towns and organizations defending human rights rights, and foreign media. Concerned about the length of my detention, I decided to begin a hunger strike.
The experience is painful, not as a Ramadan sunset and without breaking the fast. Especially since the food is not bad. But to my surprise, when our captors were shown our health-conscious - a doctor went morning and evening with a bag of drugs to treat sick prisoners - and they have not hesitated to use the torture to break the hunger strikes, the guard did not seem concerned about my initiative.
Maybe he knew that his superiors had already decided to release me the next day. It was Tuesday, May 3rd, International Day for Press Freedom. Tenth anniversary of my journalism career. Khaled Sid Mohand Article published in the edition of 29.05.11
- SHINee - The SHINee World (27/05/2011)
- Cousin of al-Assad states that he is a puppet (21/05/2011)
- Syrian Tanks Attack Towns That Held Protests (The Wall Street Journal) (29/05/2011)
- Syrian Emergency Task Force's Response to the Switzerland Placing Sanctions on Bashar Al-Assad (25/05/2011)
- EU imposes sanctions on Assad (23/05/2011)
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