The Stasi Museum in East Berlin is wonderful, not least as a result of it is the precise former headquarters of East Germany’s secret police. You may go into the precise places of work the place information on hundreds of thousands of East German residents had been saved. Into the cells the place dissidents had been stored. You may stroll the halls the place these on the very middle of a sinister police state spied on, intimidated and deliberate violence in opposition to their very own folks.
That is what we did Friday in Damascus, Syria. Besides we had been in some of the infamous divisions of the Syrian intelligence providers.
ABC’s James Longman within Assad’s secret police headquarters, Department 235.
ABC Information
It was known as Department 235, and its job was to spy not solely on the final inhabitants however on the opposite components of presidency as effectively.
The facility of the Assad regime was the paranoia it planted within the minds of everybody who labored for the state. Nobody knew who to belief and anybody may very well be taken at any second, leading to assured absolute fealty to the Assads. Till it wasn’t.
ABC’s James Longman within Assad’s secret police headquarters, Department 235.
ABC Information
Within the burned-out constructing, we come throughout a room stuffed with information nonetheless intact. A file for every individual the regime had spied on.
I open one file – a easy inexperienced doc pockets – and discover it to be on a colonel within the Syrian military. The quilt notice advises “Proceed monitoring his behaviour, as a result of he is appearing suspiciously.” It’s like studying a spy novel. Besides that is actual life. The file is dated 2015 – the peak of the protest motion in opposition to the federal government and when regime paranoia would have been at its highest. Behind the quilt notice, web page after web page of reviews from informants on this one man.
ABC’s James Longman within Assad’s secret police headquarters, Department 235.
ABC Information
We discover a number of different information, all on particular person troopers, with very detailed observations. The regime fell so shortly and the looting and burning adopted with such ferocity, that a lot of the proof of Assad’s crimes is misplaced. However on this one room, saved from the fireplace that had burned a lot else, we obtained a small glimpse into Assad’s system of worry.
ABC’s James Longman within Assad’s secret police headquarters, Department 235.
ABC Information
Within the courtyard, we meet Mohammad, a former prisoner who’s taking his probabilities and coming again to the cell he was held in 12 years in the past. We stroll collectively down into the basement, and he reveals me the place he was stored.
Tiny, coffin-like cells that 4 males had been made to share. We see the easy video games scratched into the wall the place detainees had tried to move the time. I acknowledge Tic-Tac-Toe. We hint the poetry written on the again of one of many doorways, “I am scared to die, my love, with out seeing you once more,” says the Arabic verse, scratched into the black paintwork.
I ask Mohammad how he feels being again. He smiles. “I can breathe now,” he says.
