Posted on 05/27/2005 10:24:13 PM PDT by quidnunc
Beirut, Lebanon – In September 1986, Raymond Bouban, a 21-year-old Maronite Catholic, was detained by Syrian officers and taken to their intelligence headquarters, in the city's Beau Rivage district. The following day, the mukhabarat accused him of involvement in a rocket attack on their headquarters that had taken place the previous July. Mr. Bouban protested his innocence: He'd been in Europe at the time and had the stamps in his passport to prove it. But the Syrians claimed not to believe him, and demanded a written confession. Mr. Bouban refused. So the torture began.
"You know what is a 'German chair'?" he asks, whereupon he describes a contraption purpose-built to arch a victim's back excruciatingly forward. "You know what is the 'car wheel'?" He describes a technique in which ankles and head are squeezed into a tire. He describes other tortures, such as being suspended from a rope by a single leg.
Mr. Bouban endured this for two months, but when the Syrians threatened to arrest his family he agreed to sign the confession they demanded. He was then transferred to Syria: First, to a succession of prisons in and around Damascus, one of them completely underground; then, 18 months later, to a prison called Tadmor, in Syria's eastern desert. "You can say this was the real hell," he tells me, as if to suggest that what had come before was a mere purgatory.
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(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Anyone else ever seen the Syrian prez on TV and want to ring his neck? He looks like a total pussy.
Don't tell Amnesty International about Syrian torture of innocent civilians - they're too busy wailing about Guantanamo as a 'Gulag' - when the rest of Cuba is the real "Gulag of our times" - not to mention, Syria, Iran, N. Korea, China, etc. etc.
Wasn't Lebanon once the symbol of western civilization in the middle east? American University?
Isn't Christianity a large minority religion, there? Large enough to warrant important seats in the government?
Does the future offer a real secular democracy, for Lebanon? One the US and Israel (perhaps the EU group) would welcome and support?
A rather stupid article. Syria isn't out of Lebanon, just underground.
The visable soldiers have withdrawn but syria left spies in place in every aspect of Lebanons govt and military.
And Yes I'd love to personally kick that punk Bashir Assads weenie ass til he cries like the feeble little wuss he is.
Put a catcher's mask on him. He could be Jorge Posada's evil twin.
I traveled through this desert last week and it is one of the most remote and desolate places I have ever been.I would certainly hate to be there.As for Assad I think he and his wife might bring a better relationship between the West and Middle East than we could forsee.Time will tell.
Yet another reason to take out Iran, IMHO.
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