Syrian activists dying to tell their story - Telegraph

Syrian activists dying to tell their story - Telegraph

clipped from article:Syrian activists dying to tell their story
During more than nine months of protest against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, it is Syria's media activists who have ensured that the outside world knows what is really going on.By Christine Marlow, in Douma and Nick Meo in Beirut

8:00AM GMT 01 Jan 2012

Naked on the concrete floor of the interrogation room, hands tied behind his back and a blindfold covering his eyes, the boy listened to the slowly approaching footsteps of the Syrian intelligence officer. The pained screams of his brother came from the next room.

"Where is the media rat? Where is Ali?" the interrogator rasped into his ears. He felt someone clamp cables to his toes and push him back into the shallow pool of water as the voltage was turned up for his next electric shock.

The two teenagers had been detained after Syrian officers found loudspeakers at their home in the restive Damascus suburb of Douma which they said could be used at demonstrations.

Kept in a political intelligence base in the capital, for two months they were alternately interrogated and tortured for information on opposition activists operating in their town. Their questioners especially focused, the brothers said, on who was documenting crackdowns by the regime on demonstrations for dissemination to the foreign media.

During more than nine months of protest against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, culminating in some of the largest demonstrations ever two days ago on the last Friday of the year, it is Syria's media activists who have ensured that the outside world knows what is really going on.
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