
How Forensic Architecture Revealed Details of a Secret Military Prison in Syria - miraj
https://www.fastcodesign.com/3068329/infographic-of-the-day/how-forensic-architecture-revealed-details-of-a-secret-military-priso
======
salimmadjd
I have problem with these stories. Mainly because I feel they're coming out in
concert to form public opinion into taking military action in Syria.

There is a good analysis on Amnesty International faulty reporting on this.
[0]

[0] [https://timhayward.wordpress.com/2017/01/23/amnesty-
internat...](https://timhayward.wordpress.com/2017/01/23/amnesty-
internationals-war-crimes-in-syria/)

~~~
finid
I agree with you.

These types of reporting will continue until Assad goes the way of Saddam and
Muammar Gaddafi. That's been the goal from Day 1. If we really cared about
stuff like this, we need to hear about what's going on in Yemen courtesy of
our friends over in Saudi Arabia, and in the Gaza strip. Even events in
Bahrain deserve attention.

But no, it's about how hard the Syrian army's hitting the terrorist we're
arming.

~~~
grw_
Amnesty International works tirelessly to document human rights abuses in all
of the other conflicts you mention and has done for many years. What exactly
is your point?

~~~
salimmadjd
Amnesty Internation was duped into false reporting that got us into the first
Iraq war. Amnesty later retraced their 84 page report[0].

How is it possible an organization that documents human rights could mislead
the world? Any government PR firm, backed by CIA or MI6 can create a list of
"witnesses" and have them testify to AI. My point is, just because AI is
documenting it, it doesn't mean it's legit. Especially around Syria since
there is a lot of documented story fabrication.

[0]
[https://www.democracynow.org/2003/12/2/a_debate_on_one_of_th...](https://www.democracynow.org/2003/12/2/a_debate_on_one_of_the)

~~~
grw_
I think that's a reasonable concern to have. My question was regarding the
parent comment's implication that AI themselves are deciding not to publish
information on abuses in other areas. The user seems to feel that these things
have not been publicised, when in fact there are ongoing awareness campaigns
on all of the countries listed.

~~~
Sacho
I think a more charitable interpretation of their point was that AI's
information, which is already suspect, is cherry-picked when presented to the
US audience(referencing the article in the thread, and many others by US
newspapers) to form the narrative that Assad must be ousted.

------
M_Grey
It's sad, but the truth is that Amnesty International has had ample practice
over many decades when it comes to the grim business of collecting and
correlating detailed accounts of the depths of human misery. It's good to see
that modern techniques and tools make it possible to put that to more use than
just testimony of what a wretched species we are.

>To aid them with their campaign for independent monitoring of the prison,
Amnesty collaborated with Forensic Architecture, a research agency at
Goldsmiths, University of London that uses "architectural evidence" to work on
behalf of international prosecutors, human rights organizations, and political
justice groups. Together, they've created an interactive model of Saydnaya
prison—a place completely closed off to outsiders—using only aerial satellite
images and the testimonies of former detainees.

Imagine being able to do that with Birkenau or Dachau _while it was still in
use_. If people still can't bring themselves to care enough to at least
recognize what's happening, then it won't be for lack of trying or furnishing
them with opportunities.

------
philipkglass
I've been following the Syrian Civil War for the last 5 years. The null
hypothesis: every faction has done horrible things. That's what happens in
war. It would be an exceptional civil war indeed if the central government (or
any other faction of significance) _did not_ commit atrocities. I understand
not wanting one's country to be involved in the war. I don't want my country
to intervene in the SCW either. I don't understand the resistance to
recognizing the horrible things done in Syria (by the central government or
otherwise).

Is the idea that _if_ the Syrian government commits atrocities _then_ Western
powers have to intervene in the war? So to prevent a probably-disastrous
intervention people need to deny that the Syrian government commits
atrocities? I don't think that is a logical chain of reasoning, if that is
indeed what is going on. There are all sorts of horrors in the world where
additional intervention by outside powers is likely to be worse than inaction.
It doesn't mean that we should pretend that the horrors don't exist.

~~~
astrodust
There's a false equivalency here: Only one side is barrel bombing people
indiscriminately, torturing people by the tens of thousands, and
systematically exterminating an entire group of people.

You're right, no war is without war crimes, but the Assad regime has given up
on appearances and is simply playing for keeps. They're beyond the point of no
return, they're going to end up like North Korea in terms of diplomatic ties,
if they survive this rebellion.

~~~
keldaris
> There's a false equivalency here: Only one side is barrel bombing people
> indiscriminately, torturing people by the tens of thousands, and
> systematically exterminating an entire group of people.

That seems blatantly false to me. The Assad regime is certainly guilty of all
the things on your list, but ISIS are also murdering and torturing people by
the tens of thousands and systematically exterminating entire groups of people
(has everyone already forgotten about the Yazidis, if nothing else?). Insofar
as differences in scale exist, they seem to exist only because ISIS doesn't
have the capacity to kill as many people as they'd like. Both groups have
institutionalized horrific violence as a matter of policy.

~~~
golergka
Syrian civil war has much more than just these two actors.

~~~
keldaris
That's absolutely true, I merely mentioned the most obvious counterexample in
terms of deliberate atrocities. Most of the other actors are also guilty of
deliberate human rights violations on a fairly massive scale, but I thought my
simple counterpoint was quite sufficient to rebut the parent.

------
nsajko
See also their site: [http://www.forensic-
architecture.org](http://www.forensic-architecture.org)

and this interesting movie by the same guy about the architecture in occupied
Palestine:
[http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/rebelarchitecture/2014/0...](http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/rebelarchitecture/2014/06/architecture-
violence-2014629113556647744.html)

------
tehwalrus
It is certainly dangerous to play sounds to someone to try to trigger specific
memories. This could prime them to give false information, entirely believing
it was true.

Which is a shame, because it's really important to expose the sort of evil
that happens at these places.

~~~
M_Grey
This is why single accounts aren't taken as gospel, because even at their
best, they're not going to be entirely accurate. It's only when you're
comparing many different sources who didn't know or contact each other that a
pattern emerges. When survivors and guards, and all manner of witnesses all
report the same details, those are the details you can have higher confidence
in.

Of course, torturers aren't stupid... they've known for a long time that they
might end up on the wrong side of a tribunal, or worse. These days you don't
get names, you often stay black-bagged and bound, but people still remember
voices, they see flashes during moments of struggle or when being
"submarined". People remember smells and sensations that meant nothing to
them, but which an experienced investigator is trained to recognize.

I'd recommend the book 'Torture and Democracy' to anyone interested in the
topic, from any angle at all.

------
architectonic
Assad wouldn't have been able to inherit the throne of the Syrian Republic in
the first place if not for the green light from all western capitals. This
green light lives on for his past and recent atrocities.

------
samer66
This AI report is all about propaganda, Google maps and military satellite
images make everything transparent"the Syrian regime committed and is
committing and will continue to commit human rights violations but this is
about the Amnesty International report on Syria. Western human rights
organizations--specifically Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch--
don't have any credibility among most Arabs about human rights. Their
reputation has sunk far lower ever since the Arab uprisings in 2011, where
they have been rightly perceived as propaganda arms of Western governments. So
I saw the report yesterday and read the Methodology section and immediately
felt that it is not credible: given the mention of unnamed sources (not one of
them willing to be identified and the reference to countries which host Syrian
opposition groups). But I am not an expert on those details and specifics. I
don't trust the Syrian regime (and its sponsors) and I don't trust the Syrian
rebels and their sponsors in the West and East. How to judge the report? I
asked a well-known Syrian dissident who, due to his leftist underground
activities, served years in Syrian jails and was subjected to torture by the
regime. His name is Nizar Nayouf. He wrote me those responses, and I can't
judge the validity of the specific answers but given that there is no scrutiny
by Western media to anything coming out which is in sync with Western
government propaganda on Syria, I thought it would be useful. These are my
(rush) translations (edited) of his answers: " The white prison is the one on
the shape of Mercedes. It is the main building (the old and big). As for the
red prison, it is the new and small [structure], and contrary to what is
contained in the report--which it seems does not distinguish between the two.
The first was inaugurated in 1988 while the second was not inaugurated until
2001. As for the main White building, it is quite impossible for it to
accommodate 10,000 prisoners. We know it inch by inch, and know how much it
can accommodate, at maximum, and assuming you put 30 prisoners in a cell like
pickles (or Syrian style pickles, makdus), it can't accommodate more than 4500
prisoners (in fact it was designed for 3000 prisoners). The red building is
much smaller and is exclusive to public defendants among the military members
(traffic, desertion, various criminal offenses, etc), and can't accommodate
more than 1800 prisoners, and even if you put 3 on top of one another. Yes,
paying money to achieve release is true. I personally documented tense of
cases, in which `Ali Haydar (minister of national reconciliation) was the
mediator. The talk of rape is lie on top of lie. It has no basis in truth. I
challenge them...to show once case, not only now but also from the beginning
of the era of Hafidh Al-Asad, whether with women or with men. Yes, there were
rape cases with tools (like raping around ten young women from Communist
Action Party, and others, with soft drink bottles. There is nothing in
official papers which prisoners sign something called Sidnaya prison. This is
the popular name and not the official name _. And this reveals the lies about
them signing papers indicating that they were "from Sidnaya prison". Prisoners
are not moved from prisons to On-site Courts in Al-Qabun. The on-site courts
move to prisons and hold its trials there, especially now as the Al-Qabun area
is targeted by the fire of the rebels and is not safe at all. As for the
length of the trials, it is one minute or two, and that is true since the
1980s till now. They admit that on-site trials' rulings require the signature
of the president or the Minister of Defense and yet they say in another
section that execution is approved only by the members of the court and
officers with it. They claim that the second on-site court was formed to
accommodate after the crisis, and this is a lie and show ignorance or
fabrication. The on-site court (first and second) have been in existence since
1968, and the Palestinian colonel, Salah ad-Din Al-Ma`ani, was chief of the
second on-site courts since the 1980s. He was the one who was in charge of
trial of Muslim Brotherhood, along with Sulayman Al-Khatib. As for the
requirement of confessions by prisoners while they are blindfolded, this was
ended by an order from Hafidh Al-Asad in 1998 or 1999, as far as I can
remember, but I don't know if this practice was resumed. There is no
representative of the mukhabarat in the Hay'at Al--Mahkamah Al-Maydaniyyah,
and thus he does not sign on any ruling, contrary to what is claimed by the
report. There is a mess in what they say that the head of the on-site court is
the military prosecutor, (p. 20) and this is real rubbish. The military
prosecutor job is quite different from the chief of the on-site court, and is
the chief military prosecutor in the military district administration. They
say that those who are on death row are gathered in the red building (section
B). But they said that the red boiling (p. 12) which is on the shame pf
Mercedes, which is in fact the old building, and is thus baseless as I
indicated above. And in the old building there are no cells except solitary
confinement cells (one meter by two meters) under ground. And they are for
punishment and is limited in numbers. As for the section B, it is like other
sections (10 beds on the right and 10 on the left, three stories over ground).
The thing that most got my attention was "the transfer of the prisoners form
the red building and white building in trucks and cars". When one hears this
one thinks that the distance between the two buildings is in kilometers when
they are less than 120 meters apart. The report says (p. 2) that the
"commander of the southern front group (firqah) attends the executions. There
is nothing in the Syrian Army which is called "commander of the Southern Group
13 or northern or Western or any other direction. On page 32, it says that the
picture is of the cemetery of martyrs south of Damascus. The report says that
it was expanded substantially between 2014 and 2016 and that long tunnels were
dug in them, implying that they were used to burry those who were executed.
This is silly beyond silly. In the martyrs cemetery no one can be buried there
except the martyrs of the army, even if there is an intercession by Muhammad
or Jesus or Hafidh Al-Asad himself. And contrary to what they say, and the
picture damns them, because it shows the increase in the number of victims of
the army. On p. 35, and elsewhere, they talk about forcing "prisoners to rape
one another". This is despicable fabrication which is baseless, and is
psychologically impossible under those conditions. (Is it possible for any
person in the world to get an erection to rape another person who is tied and
is under torture?) If the lying witness were too say that he was raped with
sticks, i would have believed it because this happened sometimes with public
defense prisoners as I indicated above. On page 43, they is a copy of
certificate of death which reveals that it belongs to the Minister of
Interior, but the certificate says that death was in "Military Tirshrin
Hospital", which belongs to the Ministry of Defense. This didn't happen, and
can't happen. In cases of death in a military hospital or in detention centers
belonging to Military Intelligence, the certificates show "Army or Armed
Forces, Directorate of Military Medical Services", or hospital x. One of the
most amusing--if there is amusement in tragedies--contents of the report is
what appears on page 44, where it talks about "tens of thousands" (i.e. over
30,000 or at least 18,000) who died under torture or for other reasons in
Sidnaya prison in five years but it says: "but we only were able to obtain the
names of 375 people only". What the report says about the kinds of
mistreatment and torture and criminality is generally true. The world has not
seen more savage prisons than the 18 prisons of the Iraqi (Saddamist) and
Syrian prisons since the times of Nazism and Fascism in WWII. And anything
which is reported in this context can be simply believed. We have seen it with
our own eyes and lived it personally, although there were orders to--to be
fair--that the torture of leftists and nationalists be less severe than the
savage torture of Islamists."

_ I pointed to Nizar this morning that the official Syrian regime statement
issued today used the name of Sidnaya prison, and he said that it was the
first time as they did not want to use the official name of First Military
Prison. [http://angryarab.blogspot.ae/2017/02/amnesty-internation-
rep...](http://angryarab.blogspot.ae/2017/02/amnesty-internation-report-on-
syria.html)

~~~
grzm
This is incredibly hard to read, and is just a copy-paste from the blog post
linked at the bottom. (The blog post is similarly poorly formatted,
unfortunately.) Can you edit this to include just an introduction and the link
instead?

