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Martin Lautwein was imprisoned in a Syrian secret service prison for 48 days. He is the first German to report charges against those responsible for the regime. He is a key witness in the investigation of systematic torture.
By Lena Kampf, WDR and Philipp Reichert, SWR
Your freedom is a burden to Martin Lautwein. “What should I say to the many Syrians whose relatives are still in jail?” He asks. “Why am I free? And your sons, not your daughters?”
Even two years after his incarceration in one of Syria’s most notorious prisons, Lautwein still struggles with the fact that he was taken out just because he has a German passport. So far he has not been able to talk about his time in the “Palestinian Branch” of the Syrian military intelligence service, but now he would like to do so to give a voice to the thousands of people who are still locked there in inhumane conditions.
He was the first German to denounce those responsible for the Syrian regime, for torture and crimes against humanity. Lautwein joined a complaint filed by 13 Syrian torture victims, which the European Center for Human and Constitutional Rights (ECCHR) had filed with the Prosecutor General in 2017. He wants to ensure that the German judiciary clarifies the crimes of the ruler’s regime Syrian Bashar al-Assad and hold him accountable.
2018 as a helper in the Kurdish areas
Lautwein was 27 years old when he traveled from Berlin to Iraq in 2018 out of deep political conviction. Before she worked for refugees, now she wants to provide humanitarian aid there. He works as a technician for a WHO-recognized aid organization that builds medical infrastructure in crisis areas. Together with an English-speaking colleague, he left for northern Syria in June 2018 to help in the Kurdish regions. They are waiting for papers in the border town of Qamishli, they are controlled by regime officials in the bazaar and they are arrested.
Officials may have been keeping an eye on the two development aid workers for some time, and the Syrian regime was already fighting humanitarian aid during the civil war. The Syrians reportedly thought the two foreigners were secret service agents, which Lautwein denies. The two men were forced to hand over their cell phones and asked for the names and addresses of local helpers. Lautwein and his colleague were arrested overnight and flown to Damascus the next day.
Hours of torture in the hall
At this time, Lautwein still believed in a misunderstanding that would soon be cleared up. But then the two development workers were taken to the so-called “Palestine Department”, Department 235 of the Syrian Military Intelligence Service. Lautwein separated from his colleague.
What the development worker in the interview WDR, SWR and “Süddeutscher Zeitung” reported on the arrest, cannot be verified in some cases. But their descriptions are plausible, matching the reports of other 235 Division survivors. Consequently, the brutal interrogations of the prisoners took place in the corridors. Lautwein, who was housed in a solitary cell on the first floor for the first few days, could hear and sometimes see people being beaten with cables or pipes, sometimes for hours.
A cleaning crew cleaned up the blood
Lautwein also reports on the use of the so-called “German chair”, in which the upper body is bent backwards in a backless chair until the spine threatens to break. The torture was carried out throughout the day, with a cleaning crew cleaning up the blood during breaks. “You are not seen as a person or something of value, but it’s all about breaking people,” says Lautwein.
He claims that a mother and her children were also locked in their adjoining cell. One morning the children were picked up, the guards attacked the woman and he heard how they had raped her. “After everything he had already seen, he was convinced that he would not get out alive either.”
“I felt like an animal”
Lautwein was also questioned. He says he was also tortured, but does not want to discuss the details so that his family does not find out. It gives clues that there have been beatings, for example, when it has taken too long in the bathroom. A medical report from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on an examination carried out immediately after his release gives an idea of what he had to live in custody. Ask not to post this.
After a few days he was transferred to the basement, to a dirty solitary cell full of cockroaches. There he received containers for water and food, as well as for urine and feces. Twice a day he could wash them and fill them in the toilet. Lautwein developed diarrhea and lice. “I felt like an animal. One day I went crazy and just screamed and howled in my cell.”
A body bag in the hall
He tried to commit suicide twice because he had the feeling that he could no longer bear it. Both times, the guards found him in time. “That’s when I realized that you couldn’t even kill yourself in this place. They even took the last control from me.”
Lautwein reports that contact between the inmates was prohibited. Even so, the men sometimes smiled at each other when they went to the bathroom. Still today he admires that their humanity cannot be completely stripped of them. He could hear the torture from his cell, during which the victim did not reveal anything about himself. “He just whined once in a while,” Lautwein says. The next morning there was a body bag in the hall.
Release after mediation by the Czech embassy
After a few weeks, Lautwein’s offer had improved: he had been given richer food and pills against the lice infestation. He was also able to reconnect with his colleague, who he had been told was dead. Lautwein reports that the two were forced to record a “propaganda video” in a television studio attached to the detention center, in which they themselves accused of entering Syria illegally and reported that they had been well treated in prison.
After 48 days, on August 8, 2018, Lautwein and his colleague were released through the mediation of the Czech ambassador in Damascus. The Czech Republic also conducts diplomatic business in Syria for the Federal Republic, which has not had an embassy there since 2012. It is unclear whether political or financial compensation was necessary for the release of Lautwein and his colleague. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs called in front WDR, SWR and SZ without details. According to a spokesman, “in the particularly difficult circumstances in Syria, they campaigned intensely for Lautwein and his return to Germany.”
The Syrian embassy in Berlin left a press request unanswered regarding the accusations made by Martin Lautwein.
“The process can only be a beginning”
With the complaint against the appointed senior employees of the Syrian secret service, Martin Lautwein has one hope: a trial against the perpetrators, comparable to the one that has been unfolding since April before the Higher Regional Court of Koblenz. For the first time in the world, two alleged Syrian torturers have been charged there.
“The trial in Koblenz can only be the beginning,” says Patrick Kroker, a lawyer for the ECCHR, which provides legal support to many Syrian torture victims. He wants the German authorities to issue more international arrest warrants for the perpetrators in Syria. “Military intelligence is particularly important in the system of torture and repression against the civilian population in Syria,” says Kroker. “With Martin Lautwein’s complaint, we hope that the German authorities will take a further step and that military intelligence officers will soon have to answer for their actions.”
The jailed Syrians were even worse
Lautwein is still trying to come to terms with the trauma of incarceration. He is still doing very badly. He has interrupted several training courses and now wants to build a future as a security advisor for aid organizations. He still feels ashamed that he was lucky enough to escape torture and that others were not.
He also received a kind of “luxury treatment” compared to the imprisoned Syrians, he says. According to witnesses, there are said to be more basements below the isolation cells in prison department 235. Survivors report being incarcerated at 28 square meters with more than 100 more. The inmates could only sleep one on top of the other, the deceased were not taken away, sometimes until the rats bit them.
