Twenty-year-old Fatima never thought that working in relief for the displaced people in the Damascus Countryside would lead to rape.
The aid worker says she was raped several times by investigators in the prisons of the Syrian regime.
Fatima was arrested in the neighborhood of Baramkeh as she returned from work. Security forces received her at the prison at security branch number 215 in Damascus with a beating.
Fatima told Radio Rosana that she felt afraid during her interrogation as she was holding papers and data about the families she helped. She described tearing all the papers into small pieces and then eating them to hide them. She then broke he USB flash drive, which also contained data, and swallowed it.
Fatima entered the interrogation room and was forced to take off her clothes. She was then taken to a room where she was met by her investigator, in his sixties, who was the first to assault her.
Fatima was transferred to the military security branch in the city of Homs in July 2012. There, she was raped again.
"I remember that night in the investigator’s room very well, my cries and tears didn’t save me. I was forced to lay on the bed, hands tied legs apart. When he finished, he sent me to a second investigator. This second man also tied me, but this time on a chair in his office. He raped me until I lost consciousness," she recalled.
Torture and rape in the military security branch in Homs is accompanied by "the greatest humiliation," Fatima said. Her assailants intentionally deprived detainees of sanitary pads during their menstrual cycle, and at best they sent the shirts worn by the male detainees and full of lice to be used.
Fatima was released in a deal concluded between the regime and the opposition forces, in which Syrian detainees were exchanged with Iranian prisoners. Fatima did not dare to tell her family about the rape and has not spoken about it until now. She asked that her real name not be used.
Translated and edited by The Syrian Observer
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