The Chameleon: The Testimony of an ISIS Jailer

 

 

 

Our awareness of what happened at the Stadium Prison has been enhanced by the testimony of a former ISIS jailer referred to here by his initials, R.J.

R.J. worked at the Stadium Prison from 2014 until shortly before the expulsion of ISIS from Raqqa in summer 2017. The ISIS Prisons Museum (IPM) recorded his observations in the same year.

Between the ISIS defeat and the IPM interview, R.J. had been detained, investigated, and then released by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Given his previous work in an ISIS prison, he was arrested on charges of “cooperating with ISIS.” It soon became clear to the SDF, however, that he had played neither a military nor an administrative role in the organization.

R.J. worked in a technical service role at the Stadium Prison. His testimony here is based on observations he made as he moved within the prison, spoke to ISIS members, and sometimes interacted with prisoners. There is no reason to believe that he ever harmed a prisoner. His testimony is often but not always corroborated by other sources.

“After the SDF released me,” R.J. reports, “I was contacted by a Kurdish man I had once vouched for to be released from the Stadium Prison. He helped me find my current job in the SDF’s prisons.”

At the time of writing in June 2024, R.J. continues to work for the SDF. This means that he has now served under four different powers: the SDF, ISIS, opposition Islamist militias, and the Assad regime.

R.J. stresses that his difficult financial situation and the pressing need to support his ill children oblige him to take work where he can find it.

Repression and Defection

R.J. was born and raised in Raqqa. After high school, he spent two years studying at a vocational institute in Damascus. He finished his course in 2010, and then was immediately drafted into the Syrian military for his compulsory national service.

This involved six months of military training in Harasta, in the Damascus suburbs, before he was sent into the police force. He was still performing his national service in March 2011 when mass protests against the Assad regime transformed the situation in Syria.

R.J. describes how he was deployed to suppress the popular uprising spreading throughout the country.

“I was on the Shorta (Police) soccer team. We were preparing for a match against the Ittihad team at al-Jallaa Stadium in Damascus. The match was meant to start at one thirty, but it was canceled, and our officer ordered us to board buses for Daraa instead. We were going to suppress the protestors there. We were driven to Sheik Maskin, Tasil, Dael, and al-Shajara.” R.J. is referring here to towns in the southern province of Daraa, where the earliest protests erupted.

Young conscripts like him were sometimes overwhelmed. “In al-Shajara,” he goes on, “protesters besieged us inside a police station for four days. Then some of the locals helped us to escape. We managed to reach the army’s Mortar Battalion headquarters, which was about three or four kilometers from the frontier with Israel. The battalion commander sent us over to the nearby Quneitra Police Command, and they sent us on to the Security Forces Battalion in Harasta, near Damascus.”

R.J. and his companions were punished for their failure to suppress the protestors of al-Shajara. “Our commander, who was from Homs, was transferred to the Military Court. The rest of us had three days of ta’zir. Then we were taken to Idlib to suppress the protestors there.”

At this point, the interviewer asks R.J., “By ta’zir, do you mean imprisonment?” R.J. immediately confirms it: “Yes, I meant imprisonment.” The word ta’zir – meaning “discretionary punishment” – is a common term in the ISIS lexicon. R.J. must have acquired the word during his later work with ISIS.

In 2011, however, he still served the Assad regime, which was deploying deception as well as violence in its attempt to stop the protests. R.J. describes one incident that he witnessed in Daraa city. “At midnight,” he says, “our division officer led us to the Omari Mosque, in the Balad district. He ordered us to stack weapons and ammunition there. We spent the night in the mosque. In the morning, a team from the state TV arrived. They filmed the weapons and ammunition we had stacked the previous night. They claimed the weapons had been used by rioters to kill protesters and to attack the army, and that the army had found the weapons in the mosque. But when we’d entered the mosque the night before, we hadn’t found anything except blood spatters on the walls, and medical supplies used to treat people who had been wounded by gunfire when they were protesting in the streets. It was us who put the weapons there.”

When R.J.’s police division was transferred to Saraqib, a town in Idlib province, the men were ordered to suppress protesters there too. They were told that Israeli flags had been raised in Saraqib’s main square. When R.J. arrived at the square, he saw his colleagues in the security forces shooting live ammunition at protesters.

Disturbed by what was being asked of him, R.J. was transferred from city to city – from Saraqib to Idlib city; from Idlib city to Maarat al-Numan; from Maarat al-Numan to Hama; and finally to Tartus. Here, unlike in his previous postings, “life continued as normal,” R.J. says, “because ninety percent of the city’s residents supported the regime. I stayed in Tartus for six or seven months, and my job was to ‘protect’ the rallies held in the city in support of Bashar al-Assad.”

It was at this point – in the summer of 2013 – that R.J. acted on a decision that he’d been considering since his experiences in Daraa. While on leave, he defected from the regime. He stayed in the capital for eight days, bearing a security ID that facilitated his movements even after his leave had ended. Then he took a bus home to Raqqa.

To defect was to take a huge risk. The regime hunted down and imprisoned or killed defectors. But R.J.’s move was facilitated by two factors. First, defections had become widespread over the previous two years of protest and repression. This broke the fear barrier that had hitherto kept men in the military and security forces loyal. Second, Raqqa city had slipped regime control in March 2013. This meant that it was safe for R.J. to return home.

A Prison in “Liberated” Raqqa

“Liberation” created a space for alternatives to the Assad regime. Local authorities and institutions were sometimes able to thrive in this new landscape, alongside the militias of the Free Syrian Army and other armed opposition groups.

A variety of experiments in military and political organization were attempted in Syria’s liberated zones. In liberated Raqqa, though civic activists had led protests against the regime in the year before its retreat, administrative and security powers were soon dominated by a loose coalition of mainly Islamist and Jihadi militias. These factions set up a sharia court in the Raqqa Criminal Police building, and this was where R.J. now found work. The court was intended to settle disputes, but sometimes suspected offenders were detained there temporarily while cases were examined.

According to R.J., once the parties to a dispute had been reconciled, the detainees “were released, and were rarely, if ever, subjected to torture.” But he concedes that offenders were punished by “flogging for robbery, theft, or causing problems during their detention.”

ISIS and the Stadium Prison

The Jihadi factions fought each other. By January 2014, ISIS had come out on top, and had seized full control of Raqqa city. It took over administration of the sharia court and detention center where R.J. was working, repurposing it as a “security” prison.

R.J. continued work under the new regime. Four months later, when the prison building was bombed, ISIS established the security prison at a new location – Raqqa’s municipal stadium. The stadium became R.J.’s place of work.

The stadium – previously a center for sports and cultural events – was chosen by ISIS to be a prison as a result of “its fortified basements, and because it has better infrastructure than any other building.” ISIS immediately set about fortifying this infrastructure with extra gates and bars, the better to secure its prisoners.

Many of these were people who had previously been affiliated with either the Free Syrian Army or the Assad regime. ISIS arrested such people without bothering with prior investigation. R.J. reports that, “Any civilian with a grudge could report someone to ISIS as a collaborator with the FSA or the Assad regime. The report would result in that person’s immediate arrest and transfer to [the Stadium Prison].”

The prison occupied the large basement area of Raqqa’s stadium. Previously, this area had housed gymnasiums, restrooms for athletes, and various other rooms. ISIS divided the prison into two sections, with a double wall between them that muted sound. Each section had its own entrance.

The northern section was run by the Sham – or Syria – province security branch, while the southern section was run by the Raqqa province security branch. The Sham branch detained people brought from other ISIS-controlled regions of the country, whereas the Raqqa branch detained locals. According to R.J., part of the Sham branch’s section was used to detain ISIS members suspected of disloyalty or disobedience. These men were kept separate from the other prisoners.

Both sections contained group cells, each of which housed 30 to 50 prisoners. The former restrooms were converted into solitary confinement cells. In addition, ISIS set up offices for the judges, investigation rooms, administrative offices, and so on.

While each group cell contained a toilet with hot water, the prisoners in the solitary cells had to relieve themselves in plastic bags, which deepened their suffering. R.J. says that the solitary cells were used more to torture than to simply isolate prisoners. If the interrogators were unable to obtain confessions, they sent suspects to solitary.

If the jailers were angry with a prisoner for any other reason, they would also send him to solitary. R.J. describes one such incident, when the jailers heard prisoners praying in a way they didn’t like. The prisoners in the group cells used to choose one of their number as an imam to lead them in prayer. “One day,” R.J. reports, “the ISIS guys heard an imam in a group cell seeking God’s help against evil-doers. So they stopped the prayer and took the imam to a solitary cell. I never saw him again. They might have killed him.”

R.J. adds that “Kurds who hadn’t left the region” were also kept in solitary. By this stage, after suffering defeats at the hands of Kurdish-led militias, ISIS had decided to force all Kurds out of its territory to “any region they chose outside its state.”

Those in solitary were often suspended by their wrists from a metal chain connected either to the ceiling or to a hoist, so that they dangled with their toes barely touching the ground. This torture is called shabh. Another torture involved forcing a prisoner’s hands through small holes in the solitary cell door and handcuffing them from the other side with metal handcuffs. This meant the prisoners were unable to sit or lie down, or even to move position. Other tortures, like flogging, burning, or stabbing and cutting with knives, mutilated prisoners’ bodies.

The torture method that R.J. considers “the easiest” involved forcing the detainee to stand for hours on end in the corridor outside the investigation room. Any attempt to move was observed through surveillance cameras, and resulted in a doubling of the torture’s duration. R.J. remembers noticing a prisoner being forced to stand in the corridor one day after lunch. He was still standing in the same place when R.J. passed him again in the evening, and then once again the next morning.

According to R.J., flogging was the only torture that women prisoners were subjected to, and this was done mainly to coerce confessions. ISIS employed female jailers to this end. R.J. says these mujahidat were not locals, but rather “Saudis or Europeans.” It seemed ISIS trusted them more than the female recruits from Raqqa.

R.J. witnessed several prisoners dying as a result of torture. One was a man in his 50s. “I saw him in one of the unlocked solitary cells,” R.J. remembers. “Those cells could easily have been opened, yet it was impossible for anyone to dare try. The place was fully monitored by cameras. When I passed by that man’s cell, I saw his body had turned yellow. I touched him, and he was very cold. I told the emir, but he told me to leave him until ‘his time comes.’ Two days later, they came and took his body away.”

Interrogations and Executions

Prisoners were summoned blindfolded to interrogation. There were four or five interrogators at work in the prison, and they never removed their masks except at prayer time.

The interrogators’ names were always preceded by the word sheikh. R.J. claims that these officials abused prisoners physically, but not verbally. During interrogations, they would force prisoners to kneel and face the wall and whip them or beat them with a stick, threaten them with a gun, and sometimes shoot in order to terrorize them.

Prisoners were never sentenced to specific terms of imprisonment. “There were either acquittals or convictions. A conviction meant staying in prison indefinitely,” R.J. says. No more than 5 percent of cases ended in acquittals.

Then Abu Luqman, the emir, or governor, of the prison, decided that prisoners should be detained for no more than four months. That decision remained in effect when Abu Ali al-Anbari assumed the governorship, and even after his death two months later, when he was succeeded by Abu Ayyub. After the prescribed four months, R.J. explains, “those who hadn’t confessed would be acquitted and released, and those who had would be sent for punishment.”

Punishment generally meant execution. R.J. distinguishes between those executions carried out inside the prison and those carried out outside, in front of a public audience. ISIS members were never executed in public but, according to R.J., in a room adjacent to the prison kitchen. Three to four were executed every week. Most were men who had already been suspended from their wrists in the solitary cells. They were charged with “deviation,” questioning authority, or “turning their backs to the enemy.” In some cases, personal disagreements between ISIS commanders resulted in death sentences.

On one occasion, the jailers dragged a handcuffed and blindfolded man to the execution room, and left him there. After they had gone, R.J. heard the man pleading, in a Saudi accent, if anybody could hear him. When R.J. approached and asked about his circumstances, the Saudi told him, “I have been detained for 27 days without knowing why. I’m the leader of the Abu Bakr al-Siddik Security and Combat Battalion. Two ISIS members said they were bringing me to meet Sheikh Abu Mohammad al-Ansari. But when we arrived at the stadium, they handcuffed and blindfolded me, and accused me of intending to defect. It’s been 27 days, and I’ve neither been summoned before a judge nor interrogated. I want to know where I am, in which room?” R.J. told him, “Most likely, you’re going to be executed!”

As for the executions carried out in public, R.J. says the victims were generally not local to the place in which they were killed. He elaborates, “Civilians from Deir ez-Zor, for example, were executed in Raqqa,” and vice versa. “That was because ISIS feared that executing civilians in their hometowns would enrage their families and clans, especially if they were influential or popular.” (Documentation and the testimonies of other witnesses, however, suggest that ISIS did not always follow this rule. Sometimes the organization did execute people in their hometowns. The decision seems to have depended on the social and political context at the time.)

Those sentenced to death were usually charged with spying or similar intelligence-related offenses.

Conditions of Detention

When ISIS first took control of the stadium, there were no doctors or nurses to take care of the prisoners. According to R.J., however, the organization began recruiting non-Syrian doctors and nurses once it had consolidated its power in the city. These foreign health professionals worked in the prison and also trained Syrian nurses. As a result, the prisoners received medical examinations and medication if necessary.

ISIS prohibited visits to the prisoners. The only exceptions were when relatives were permitted to see prisoners one day prior to their execution. Neither party was informed of the approaching execution. ISIS even lied to the prisoners in question, promising they would be released so long as they didn’t tell their families anything about the reasons and circumstances of their imprisonment.

R.J. learned about the food provided to prisoners in his conversations with a prison cook, and because he and the other prison personnel, including the guards and interrogators, were served the same food. For five days of the week, he says, lunch consisted of mutton or chicken and broth or yogurt with rice. Dinner was also a cooked meal. Breakfast consisted of ready-made foods like jam or halva, zaatar and oil, or cheese and olives.

The cook used a car provided by ISIS to transport food from the market to the prison kitchen. The kitchen was fully equipped with cooking utensils. When the food was ready, the cook brought it to the group cells in large pots. The prisoners then distributed it among themselves.

The prisoners in solitary confinement received a mere quarter of the portion allocated to those in the group cells. The food was served on a polystyrene plate, without a spoon. Solitary prisoners were often deprived of breakfast and dinner, and sometimes went for two days at a stretch without food.

Each group cell was allocated two or three bars of soap a day. Prisoners in the group cells were responsible for cleaning the solitary cells as well as their own, given that the people in solitary were usually suspended by their wrists and so were unable to clean.

Escaping the Stadium… and ISIS

The Coalition began bombing ISIS in Raqqa at the end of 2016, and steadily intensified its campaign until the organization’s defeat in July 2017. The most violent strike against the Stadium Prison was a drone missile that penetrated the ventilation hole of one group cell, killing all 13 of its prisoners. This event made ISIS decide to transfer the remaining inmates to a nearby house, close to the Fardous bakery.

Any vehicle driven by ISIS became a target for Coalition warplanes, so the prisoners were transferred on foot. There were so many prisoners that they had to be moved in batches. Four prisoners from the final batch managed to escape. They were pursued. Two were recaptured and summarily executed.

ISIS used the house near the bakery as a prison for 15 days. Then it moved the prisoners again, this time to a school building near the train station that it had refurbished as another prison. A month later, the prisoners were transferred yet again. Now they were held in a recently built children’s hospital containing a basement that ISIS had already used as a security point. As a result of very intense Coalition bombardment, that final transfer of prisoners was done in an atmosphere of complete chaos.

R.J. could sense the impending collapse, and took the opportunity to jump.

“ISIS was floundering,” he says. “It was nearing its end. And this provided me with a chance to escape. I manipulated the ISIS guy who was responsible for me. I told him I wanted to go to fight on the frontline, and to die for the sake of God. He couldn’t resist that! So I headed home instead of to the frontline, and I stayed at home until the whole Raqqa region had been liberated, and the SDF had taken control.”

When he did eventually leave home, the SDF arrested and imprisoned R.J. for his service under ISIS. He was released when a local man returned a good deed.

“I’d once vouched for a Kurd,” says R.J. “I told the ISIS guys he was innocent, and they believed me and let him out of prison. Well, this Kurdish man mediated my release from the SDF prison. And then the same person helped me return to my old work, but this time in the SDF’s prisons. So now I can continue to provide for my children.”

As the chameleon shifts its colors to fit the environments through which it moves, so R.J. survived through a time of turmoil. From the Assad regime to the Islamist militias, from the militias to ISIS, and from ISIS to the SDF, R.J. adapted to serve successive regimes. He provided for his children throughout all the changes.