Torture victims have spoken out about the horror of Syrian torture chambers after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad. Residents of Douma, in the eastern Ghouta region of Syria, were subjected to a horrific chemical warfare attack launched by Assad forces on April 7, 2018. An investigation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found that two yellow cylinders were dropped from a Syrian air force helicopter, crashing through the top floor of one apartment building and landing on the balcony of another.
The attack killed 43 people, who chocked to death because of the concentrated green-yellow chlorine gas that hissed out of canisters. And their bodies were blue and black when civil defence workers brought them out to the street. For years, the victims of Assad's regime couldn't speak out as the last rebel group fighting in Douma surrendered the next day, and the town was forced to grieve in silence. But after rebels led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) toppled the president last week, victims are finally able to reveal the extent of the torture they faced over the years.
Abdulhadi Sariel lived on the opposite side of the street from where the chlorine cylinders landed - and said his family survived because they stayed on a higher floor. But despite this, one of his daughters still has respiratory problems as a result of the attack, he told the Observer.
The 64-year-old said: "No one in that basement came out alive. Their bodies turned to black, their clothes went green and were burnt, they crumbled and stuck to their bodies. The clothes looked like wood. We threw out all of our clothes but [you can still see the effect] on the curtains. We can escape the bullets and the tanks, but chemicals travel through the air. We were afraid, children were afraid.".
