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00:00I now have the pleasure of speaking to Omar al-Shogreh who is a human rights activist who
00:05spent three years in prison in Syria including in the notorious Sinander jail. He's now living
00:11in Stockholm and he joins us from there now. Omar thanks so much for joining us on the program.
00:18Now you spent time in that infamous prison in Damascus. Tell us what you were in there for
00:23and describe what you experienced.
00:25In Syria you don't need to do anything to become a political prisoner. It's enough for
00:33the checkpoint to not like the way your hair looks like and they'll take you to prison. That's
00:38how it was until two days ago. So I was not taken to prison because I did anything. Last time I was
00:47taken I was just sitting at home with my cousins and they attacked and they arrested me with my
00:52cousins and other friends and so on. They were just trying to clean the city from the young
00:57people so nobody would potentially protest against the government. So I was taken to prison and
01:05interrogation. During interrogation they torture you and they pull out your fingernails and they
01:10ask you questions. You better answer with the way they want. So the false confessions were
01:16first out of us to say that we committed crimes that were not technically committed and we
01:23definitely didn't commit it to ourselves. So we ended up being in prison and ended up being
01:28sentenced to execution and spent three years. One of these three years has been inside NAB prison
01:36which is known to be the worst prison if not only in Syria, if not in the entire world,
01:42definitely in Syria. And then on my day of execution I was lucky enough to be smuggled.
01:50My mum has made sure to bribe everyone including the execution guards to smuggle me out of prison
01:56and that's how I survived. Extraordinary story. It sounds absolutely harrowing Omar.
02:02Tell us about the Syrians who very much share your story and you as well. I mean you must have
02:09so much trauma and must be dealing with so much trauma. Tell us about the trauma
02:14that you have experienced. Well the biggest trauma I can tell you is the world have been
02:21watching us for 14 years be killed, displaced, tortured, starve, go through chemical weapons
02:28and do nothing about it. Nothing is more depressing on this planet to see democracies
02:33around the world not even caring about humans that are trying to fight for democracy. I mean
02:39this is so disappointing to see. Has been so disappointing for so many years. That being said
02:45I cannot, I don't know how much I can tell you about the time on those prisons. Imagine the
02:51torture that I and thousands, hundreds of thousands of Syrians went through. Imagine the pain of you
02:59know hearing your bones being broken. Imagine when they pull out your fingernails. Imagine when they
03:06force you to torture the one that you love the most or you will be killed with him. Imagine when
03:12they force my beloved ones to torture me. Imagine when they ask me to choose someone to be executed
03:18and if I don't choose we all will be executed. Imagine the trauma they wanted to put us through
03:25both physically and mentally and yet despite all the pain they tried to inflict on us physically
03:30and mentally we have prevailed and we won and the Syrian people have managed to bring down the
03:37dictator that has been in power for so many years. Established all the intelligence services he needed
03:42to survive for as long as possible and yet we broke him and today we can be here on the street
03:48celebrating, laughing, smiling, carrying very high our flags and singing the songs we want.
03:57Yesterday I was in a celebration protest with a lot of Syrians. It took me back to 2011 when people
04:05went out to the street asking for freedom and democracy and they raised their their hands
04:11to the sky. It was the same feeling except that now we have no fear. Now we know that we won the
04:19war against the dictator. Now it's all about making sure that we still we stay engaged in
04:25politics to make sure that we achieve the freedom we want to achieve the democracy we want but the
04:30biggest obstacle we had for democracy and freedom of Syria is gone and it's Assad.
04:37Absolutely extraordinary Omar. Give us your thoughts on HTS now. You're speaking of this
04:43optimism. Do you really believe that HTS will really mark this turning point for Syria and for
04:49the Syrian people? Syria is going through a very sensitive time right now. It's very new for people.
04:56Everything is new. Everything is going on very fast. However what happened in the last few days
05:01has been amazing in the sense of bringing down the Assad regime. I don't fear that any group will claim
05:07power because they cannot because the Syrians won't like that. Do you think we went out to the
05:12street asking for freedom and democracy and being slaughtered for 14 years to allow a group come and
05:17take the power after the regime falls? No Syrian would accept that so I don't see that as a huge
05:24risk like the media is painting it. While I don't necessarily like all the parties or the divisions
05:31that are that are that has been fighting and I think there's been a lot of mistakes here and there
05:37yet I believe in the Syrian people. I believe in my people. I believe in myself that I would not let
05:42another dictator come to power and I would want someone in power that respects me as much as they
05:47respect my mother and my sister and my friends who are Kurds and Alawites and Dursians and and
05:54Sunni and Christians. We were not subtle before we have democracy and I think everybody is aware
06:00of that in Syria. The fighters from all different divisions they are aware of that so I don't think
06:05anyone will try to claim the power to themselves because they know that our destiny will be the
06:10destiny of Bashar al-Assad. Well we're all hoping that things will get better there. Omar thank you
06:16so much for sharing your story with us. We really appreciate having you on the program. That's
06:21Omar al-Shogreh who is a human rights activist and director of detainee affairs for the NGO
06:29the Syrian Emergency Task Force. Thanks so much for joining us on the program.