Guantanamos of the Muslim world

When we go over some thing related to Guantanamo, the brutality of American soldiers obviously come to our mind. Guantanamo is a detainment facility of the United States located in the South Eastern end of Cuba. It is considered as a black prison.  But we heard only about Guantanamo Jail in American world, we heard the brutal human rights violations only by the American soldiers in Guantanamo prison. We are blind on the inhuman Guantanamos created by the Muslim autocratic rulers in the Arab world.

Let us turn over the screen a morsel into the Muslim world. The atrocious actions of Muslim rulers have come to the fore now. Why the world is ignorant about the Tora Prison of Egypt? Here prison guards are forced inmates to rape each other. Can you imagine this? Another vile story from our neighboring Islamist nation Pakistan was reported by the Dawn newspaper recently.

This story revolves around two ordinary Syrian citizens, Bahaa Mustafa Joughel (Syrian identity card number 01020288992) and Mohamed Aiman Abo Attot (Syrian card number 01020265346). Let us have a drive to their life.

Bahaa Joughel, a native of Damascus, (Capital of Syria) born in 1976. He has been living in Pakistan with his family, comprising his two children his sister and her daughters. He processed a small IT company in Pakistan. According to his family’s version he was not engaged in any kind of political activities. Pakistani security police break into his home in Islamabad on Jan 30, 2002 and taken him in custody. Joughel vanished for five months; his family told only that he was being investigated by the Americans.

But his (Joughel) family was soon traumatized to hear that he had been taken to Syria barely three months after his arrest. He was jailed at the Palestine branch of Syrian Military intelligence. The jail is notorious for its atrocities against prisoners.

Joughel exhausted 20 months in underground solitary internment; he underwent ruthless torments. His sight damaged by his confinement. He was unconfined on Feb 12, 2005, but was forbidden to leave Syria. And then he was re-arrested on Christmas Eve of the same year. No charges have ever been made against him. Then he was transferred to Sednaya prison.

For several months, Joughel’s family lived in fright of hearing that he was dead. In the last march (2010), he was permitted to call his wife from prison.

Coming to Mohammad Attot. Attot (51), is Joughel’s brother-in-law, he was in the Syrian Army during the early 1980s when the Muslim Brotherhood staged a savage uprising against Hafez el Assad’s Syrian establishment. It was packed down with equal savagery and Attot was forewarned that he was to be arrested. He fled to Beirut and from there to Turkey. There he married and have four daughters.

Attot spent 13 years in Turkey; he worked for some time cleaning medical instruments. But, abruptly he was arrested by the Turkish authorities and handed over to the Syrians, even though his wife and children were Turkish. From 1993 to 2005 (for 13 years), he was stirred between the Palestine and Sednaya prisons. The period is longer than any Guantanamo prisoner has been held. Then, one early morning in Nov 2005, he called his family in Turkey and said he had been released.
 
But on July 6 2006, he was unexpectedly re-arrested and put in Sednaya prison. His family was given permission to visit him in 2008, but when the Sednaya rising (uprising against Jail atrocities in Sednaya prison) took place, the visit was cancelled.

The great tragedy here is that their (Attot and Joughel) families have no information about them. They have no known reason for this obscene term of imprisonment. No further news, No charges, No trial… Is this the Shari at rule propagated by the Islamic rulers, then it is great…. This kind of unheard Guantanamos is a hidden reality in many Muslim nations.

 
Dipin Damodharan is a Journalist (Sub Editor with Jeevan TV) based in Kerala. Author of several articles in various national and international media. He can be contacted at [email protected]

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