Parvaz Recounts Horrors in Syria's 'Mini-Guantanamo'

The Canadian reporter who had planned to cover anti-government protests spent two weeks in a Syrian prison on charges of being a spy.

Dorothy Parvaz, the Canadian journalist for Al Jazeera who was missing for 19 days in Syria and Iran, said she heard the cries of people being tortured near where she was being held in Damascus. Parvaz wrote on the Al Jazeera website that she was detained for bringing a satellite phone and an internet hub into Syria on April 29, prompting authorities to claim she was a spy. Parvaz describes men screaming Arabic over and over again as the sound of interrogators beating them reverberated throughout the facility, pools of blood on the floor, fetid, rotten food, and a hopelessness that had fallen over her cellmates. Her account of her time spent in Syria's “mini-Guantanamo” is harrowing, to say the least, but must be read. She was freed from Iranian detention yesterday.