SYRIA: Former torture victim Aktham Naisse talks to Deaglán de Bréadún about his experiences in captivity at the hands of Syria's Assad regime, father and son.
Nothing in this world needs public exposure more than torture, but that doesn't make it easy for victims to talk about it. After all, torture is often an experience of a very intimate kind which involves not just extreme pain but humiliation and loss of personal dignity. Indeed, one feels distinctly intrusive trying to elicit the details from those who have been subjected to such treatment.
Aktham Naisse (pronounced "Nay-say") is no exception. Like victims of Saddam Hussein who visited Dublin before the US-led invasion of Iraq, this victim of the Assad regime in Syria is reluctant to go into detail about his sufferings.
He has been imprisoned regularly since the early 1980s and claims he was tortured many times. Initially it was what he calls "the Syrian chair", which sounds like a modern-day version of the rack. He points to the places where his shoulder and neck were badly injured: he still feels the pain. Then there were the beatings: generally punches to the kidneys where pain can be inflicted without leaving a mark.
Over time, the methods became more sophisticated. He was stripped naked and plunged up to his waist in water. Shockwaves or vibrations were sent through the water, ensuring that he could never stand still and had to keep jumping.
It's enough to turn the most benignly disposed individual into a gloomy misanthropist, but one of the surprising things about Naisse is his cheerfulness and equanimity. The 53-year-old lawyer has an amiable smile and a ready laugh, even when discussing the grossest examples of man's inhumanity to man. He has a daughter aged 22, and Naisse has been in and out of prison all that time.
He is in Ireland for some recuperation as a guest of Front Line, the Dublin-based organisation which seeks to protect human rights defenders at risk around the world. The organisation's director, Mary Lawlor, shows me Naisse's card, identifying him as a human rights defender with the Front Line imprimatur.
Naisse could stay away but he's determined to go back to Syria, despite the fact that he's facing trial at the state security court on April 24th on charges that could get him three to 15 years in a Syrian prison. Why go back to the possibility of such a stark fate? Speaking in Arabic through an interpreter, he says: "My future is in Syria, not here."
Naisse is head of Syria's Committees for Defence of Democratic Freedoms and Human Rights. Last April he was arrested and charged with "engaging in activities against the socialist regime and opposing its revolutionary aims".
The previous month he had organised a protest outside parliament to call for democratic freedoms and the lifting of the state of emergency in force since 1963.
The first time he was hauled in was over his involvement in an underground movement for democracy. The authorities held him for nine months without trial.
Next time they came after him he went on the run from the secret police but was caught and held for another eight months. In 1987 he got 11 months, but there was worse to come in 1991, when he got nine years' hard labour ("breaking stones", as he puts it).
As well as physical torture he was imprisoned in the dark wearing only his underwear. Nobody was allowed to talk to him except his interrogator and, even then, Naisse was blindfolded with his hands behind his back. He was released after seven years as part of an amnesty in 1998. He says he has always campaigned by peaceful means and is against any forms of violence.
Hopes were high of a transition to democracy when Hafiz al-Assad died and was succeeded as president by his son, Bashar al-Assad, in June 2000. Asked if the current president is more liberal than his father, Naisse responds: "As a person maybe, but not as president."
He dismisses various government gestures as "manoeuvres". There may be pressure for liberalisation from outside the country but, according to Naisse, there is no "reforming" stream in the Syrian regime.
On events in Lebanon, he believes Syria should withdraw its troops "immediately" and that it would have been clever to pull out a year ago. He takes a measured view of the Bush administration's protestations about leading a campaign for democracy in the Middle East.
As he sees it, US policy is first and foremost about protecting US interests, principally the supply of oil from the region.
If there were true democratic elections in Syria, would Naisse be a candidate? He doesn't deny it but says the immediate priority is to secure such elections in the first place.
Indeed, after all he has been through, nobody would think any worse of Aktham Naisse if he stepped back from the hurly-burly to enjoy a quiet life, but that's not part of his game-plan.
"It's my country," he says. "We are outside history. Maybe one of the reasons is just personal - I don't want my daughter to live the life I have lived."