Freed Syria activist 'lied' in TV confession
Source: France24
Activist Alaa Morelli escaped the worst in Syrian prisons, but to secure her freedom she lied during a forced "confession" on state television, saying the uprising was the work of foreigners.
A student of Latakia university located on Syria's Mediterranean coastline, Morelli, 23, was arrested on June 12 last year, just after sitting one of her second-year exams.A fellow student reported her for making and distributing pamphlets calling on Latakia residents to protest against Assad's regime.
"I came out of my exam and saw members of the security forces standing there with a student. He pointed me out to them and they detained me," she told AFP in interviews conducted in Istanbul and via the Internet.
Morelli spent over two months in detention, and was moved from one prison to another throughout.
"I saw horrible things," she says, her voice wavering, the smile vanishing from her face.
"The guards kept threatening me with solitary confinement and gave me very hard psychological treatment. But other girls suffered much worse," she says."I saw a cell packed with some 40 women, all naked, blindfolded and handcuffed. They weren't allowed to sit, they could only stand."
Some 30,000 to 40,000 people are believed to be in Syria's jails, and rights groups say detainees face systematic torture.
Morelli believes she was spared the worst because she admitted her "crimes" on television.
Syria's state television regularly airs "confessions" of detained citizens accused of working or fighting for the opposition. The footage of Morelli's "confession" was broadcast for weeks, showing her looking serious and her head wrapped in an austere white veil. Morelli told viewers she had agreed to report fabricated news of anti-regime demonstrations and crackdowns on dissidents for pan-Arab station Al-Jazeera, using a pseudonym.
Read more: http://iphone.france24.com/en/20130710-freed-syria-activist-lied-tv-confession
That was part of a programme by the Assad Army to fuel the terror of the Latakia's citizens for the rebellion, and convince them to take part in the atrocities commit by the Shabiha.
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David__77
(24,661 posts)For that matter, I'd rather be in Latakia than Raqqa, that's for sure. Peace and secularism - not so terrible.
Sand Wind
(1,573 posts)Not at peace at all, except if you suggest that US was at peace when they where sending their armies in Vietnam.
David__77
(24,661 posts)I think that this is not comparable to Syria. Residents of Latakia are indeed Syrian. Of course, the Black Panthers said that white police were a US occupation army right here in the US. I disagree, but there is a whole range of opinion on these matters.
Sand Wind
(1,573 posts)And Assad, and the sectarians from Latakia, where the ones who develop the strategy consisting of putting a maximum of blood on the hand of his secte to divide his nation and propagate a sectarian conflict.
False tv confession was part of that plan.
David__77
(24,661 posts)Sure, the objective of war is to preserve oneself and destroy one's enemy. All else follows that dictum. I disagree with your assessment of the source of sectarianism, nation-division, etc. I believe that the war against the insurgents in a just war, and the insurgency itself is leading an unjust war.
Sand Wind
(1,573 posts)"What I was saying (on Al-Jazeera) was not true. There was nothing happening in Latakia. People were going about their daily lives," Morelli said in her televised confession.
In the 15-minute interview, she gave details of opponents who she said were smuggling in satellite equipment for activists avoiding state surveillance.
Anti-regime activists' "goal is to divide the country and to turn international public opinion against Syria. They made Syria look like a pool of blood, when there was nothing happening here", she said, weeping on television.
She said she had "participated in spilling the blood of Syrians".