Some years ago, a Syrian priest in Damascus was arrested by the notorious military division, the Palestine Branch. He was accused of dealing with Israel. After his arrest, he spent more than a year and two months in a regime prison.
A former Hezbollah militia leader who defected from the organization, Hassan Saeed Mshimesh, told Zaman al-Wasl that the priest, whom he wouldn’t name for personal reasons, is in France now. The two met there and the priest told him about his tragedy and pains in a solitary cell in which he was jailed by the regime’s intelligence.
The priest and former detainee underwent all kinds of savage torture, humiliation and verbal offences – as he said- and spent two years alone in the same cell.
Mshimesh said that several attempts to discover the priest’s location and condition were made by religious parties from Lebanon and Syria. The same groups made attempts to free him, but they failed since the regime was intransigent and refused release the priest or listen to legal challenges.
The source said that his friend, the priest, did not allow him to disclose his name in order to ensure the security of his relatives and family including his father, his mother and some of his brothers still living in Damascus under the authority of the dictator Bashar al-Assad and his ruthless and inhuman henchmen.
This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
