Talal al-Shuweimi

Talal al-Shuweimi recounts the circumstances under which he was taken to the Stadium Prison for “security reasons.” He explains how ISIS guards first took him to a large group cell, chaining him up for two or three hours, before moving him to a solitary cell. He spent seven days in the solitary cell. Talal also recalls the name of the person who arrested him, and who the governor of the prison was at the time.

Talal wanders around the Stadium Prison. Talal says that ISIS had established an office there for every security risk. There was an office designated for dealing with Kurds, one for groups affiliated with the Assad regime, and another for issues regarding the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Every office had its own interrogators. For example, the office for dealing with Kurds had a Kurdish interrogator who spoke the language and knew its dialects. In his tour of the corridor, Talal reviews the rooms he passes by and explains what has changed. He enters some cells and points at steel beams fixed to the walls. ISIS would suspend prisoners from these beams before torturing them. Talal moves on to the tunnels and passages in the walls that ISIS created to enable them to either flee quickly or fight more easily when Global Coalition forces closed in on them.

Talal then enters the cell where he was detained and chained up for two hours before being moved to the solitary cell. He recalls how he met five of his relatives here. He did not know where he was, so they told him he was in the “Black Stadium” – as they called the Stadium Prison.

In the torture chamber, Talal points out the iron handcuffs that the jailers used to suspend prisoners from their wrists. Prisoners could be suspended for days, all the while being tortured by other methods. He explains how the suspension often damaged nerves in the hands.

He then walks through the various solitary cells, indicating where torture used to take place, until he stops at the solitary cell where he spent seven days before being taken to the Tabqa Prison. Two or three prisoners could often be detained together in one solitary cell. Talal recounts how a Tunisian ISIS member was once imprisoned with him for planning to defect. The man told him that, although he had been brought here, ISIS had murdered the others in his group who had intended to defect. Talal then continues, tracing over the graffiti carved by prisoners on the walls.

Talal says that talking to other prisoners was prohibited in the solitary cells. Those who violated this rule were blindfolded and taken back to interrogation. Sometimes they were tortured by being left to stand in the corridor for a long period of time.

Talal then examines several other solitary cells in the Stadium Prison. He stops at a cell that the jailers called the “doghouse.” This was a cramped cell with such a low ceiling that the prisoner could only fit by assuming the fetal position. He was left there in that position, unable to move, for days on end. If the weather was hot, or if the prisoner was large, the torment was even worse.

What is remarkable in Talal’s testimony is the comprehensive information he provides about the sections of the prison, the cells, how the cells were distributed, and how they were used.