Huthaifa al-Ibrahim

Huthaifa al-Ibrahim holds a law degree from Aleppo University. He once served as a member of the Raqqa Local Council. At the time of his arrest, he had been working as a taxi driver. In his testimony, Huthaifa recounts how ISIS arrested him one summer and held him for six days in the Stadium Prison.

On the day of his arrest, he woke up to find ISIS members standing by his bedside. They took him to the Stadium Prison and detained him in a solitary cell. At the time, he had no idea that the stadium had been repurposed as a prison.

Huthaifa describes the two solitary cells he was kept in while in the Stadium Prison. One of them was extremely cramped, the other slightly larger. He shared this larger one with two other inmates. He acknowledges that initially fear and dread prevented him from communicating with anyone. Later, he was able to overcome his fear and speak to his fellow prisoners, obtaining some personal information about them. He does not know what happened to these men.

Huthaifa presents comprehensive details about the lengthy and intense interrogation sessions he underwent. The sessions left him flustered as the interrogators never accused him of anything. Instead, the whole interrogation process was centered around his friendship with Usama, a man wanted by ISIS. Additionally, they questioned him about his communication with people abroad, and about his faith and religious commitment.

Huthaifa notes how the jailers were very strict when it came to blindfolding prisoners. Once, they put a double blindfold on him to ensure that he could not glimpse the investigation room or the faces of the guards. Therefore, he is unable to describe the details of the room. From what he could hear, Huthaifa says he figured the room was not very spacious and often housed multiple interrogators at once. One time, when the blindfold loosened slightly, he was able to make out a table. 

Huthaifa recounts how ISIS subjected prisoners to psychological torture. A jailer once threw orange execution suits into his group cell without uttering a single word. All the inmates were petrified, thinking their time had come. One of them started crying. They then realized the guards were simply playing a game with them.

Next, Huthaifa details daily life in the cell. Food often consisted of bread and bulgur. He and his fellow inmates would also read the books that were available — some of which were written by the Egyptian radical Islamist Sayyid Qutb — alongside the compulsory religious pamphlets given out by ISIS during their sharia courses.

Regarding hygiene, Huthaifa describes how filthy the cramped solitary cell was in which he and other inmates were detained (though it was a solitary-sized cell, several prisoners were forced into it at once). He recounts that they relied solely on water to maintain a minimum degree of cleanliness in the tiny cell. They also tried to maintain their personal hygiene in an attempt to avoid lice and infections like scabies – a difficult feat considering their mattresses were filled with parasites. Huthaifa confirmed that there was a lack of medical care. He says that the jailers did not provide him with allergy cream, though he asked for it several times.

Like most prisoners, Huthaifa could not understand how the guards were rotated. He only noticed that some were more cruel and condescending toward prisoners than others. Neither could he determine how many ISIS members or prisoners there were in total in the prison. The sounds he heard, however, suggested large numbers of both.

Huthaifa recalls a remarkable coincidence. Once, he overheard an altercation between a jailer and a prisoner. Upon closer listening, he realized that the prisoner was Jamal, his friend and colleague from the Raqqa Local Council. Although he attempted to call out to Jamal, Huthaifa was afraid of what might happen, and so could not shout loudly. Jamal never heard him. 

After six days of interrogation and torture, ISIS released Huthaifa. They warned him not to communicate with anyone abroad, and ordered him to completely forget his experience in the Stadium Prison, never to mention it to anyone again.