Finally, some justice for Syrians

A landmark conviction of a high-level official for crimes against humanity came down today.

Journalism is too opaque and misunderstood. Chills gives a behind-the-scenes look at how dangerous investigative journalism gets made. 

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Anwar Raslan, a former Syrian intelligence officer, stands next to his lawyers in a courtroom in Germany after being convicted for crimes against humanity. (Photo by THOMAS FREY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

It was July 2013, and in a small apartment in Amman, Jordan, a gray-haired Syrian man named Mazen was standing in front of me with his arms above his head, facing the wall. He was demonstrating how he’d been tortured by the Assad regime. His wife sat on the floor in a black abaya, watching silently. There were no chairs in the small apartment, and very few belongings. The most prominent items were a couple of flat, thin mattresses along the walls.

Before the couple fled Syria the previous December, Mazen had spent a month in the al-Khatib prison in Damascus. He’d been caught smuggling desperately needed medicine into the country. For 16 days of that month, Mazen said, he’d had his hands tied over his head and was hung by them on a wall, naked. He described how he’d quickly lost all sensation in his hands — one of which he was still unable to move when we met.

Mazen described being held in a cell so crowded the men took shifts to sleep. Even taking turns, he said, “we slept on each other.”