Murad Hakura says he felt the blood from two executed fellowprisoners seep onto him as he cowered behind a pillar during what he describedas a "massacre" of detainees by Syrian troops. In a dungeon in thenorthern town of Maaret al-Numan, soldiers from army intelligence opened fireon detainees killing 65 of them before retreating in the face of a rebeladvance, according to Hakura.
Hakura, a 32-year-old shopkeeper from the capital Damascuswhose family live in Maaret al-Numan, says he was stopped on June 21 at acheckpoint on the highway that runs between the two cities. He was detained inthe old cultural centre in the eastern part of the town that was converted intoa prison and used for interrogation by army intelligence. More than 80prisoners, presumed sympathisers of the revolution or soldiers suspected bytheir superiors of wanting to defect, were crammed into two rooms in the basement.They suffered daily interrogations and torture, being beaten with fists andclubs or electrocuted. One of the officers, whom he named only as Maymun, would"ask the questions while his sidekick Jalal would beat" the victimswho were handcuffed or suspended in the boiler room. As the rebels holed up inthe west of the town began to gain ground, the prisoners feared their guardswould carry out reprisals. "But we never imagined what was tohappen," Hakura recollects.
Recently, two soldiers burst into the room where Hakura andhis fellow inmates were kept. "Jalal was one of the two," he says.The soldiers opened fire immediately with their Kalashnikov assault rifles,"emptying three magazines." Hakura ducked behind a pillar. "I curledup on the floor and two bodies fell on top of me. I felt their blood seep ontome, heard their prayers and their final groans."
The army then fled the compound under rebel fire.Miraculously, Hakura was not wounded. He administered first aid to those whohad been shot, applying tourniquets and trying to stop the bleeding usingplastic bags. "I saw 28 dead with my own eyes in my cell, and 32 in theroom next door. Three of four who had been wounded died shortlyafterwards."
Three days later the two bullet-ridden and blood-stainedbasement rooms still bear witness to the killings. The thick stomach-churningstench of rotting corpses fills the nostrils as flies gather on pools ofcongealed blood that make the soles of one's shoes stick to the floor.
A rebel's spray-painted slogan features on oneblood-spattered wall: "Another massacre of (President) Basharal-Assad." "I didn't do anything wrong (before being arrested),"Hakura asserts. "I was just an ordinary protester." Kalashnikov inhand, however, he now fights for the armed insurgents on the front line.
