Syria’s longest-held detainee, Ragheed Ahmad al-Tatari, says his joy over the downfall of the Bashar al-Assad regime was far greater than his joy of being freed from prison after 43 years behind bars.
Tatari, 72, a former pilot, was held in several detention centers and prisons under the Assad regime, including Mezzeh Military Prison in Damascus, Tadmor in Homs countryside, Sednaya and Adra in Damascus countryside, Suwayda, and finally Tartous prison, from where he was released.
Speaking with Anadolu in an interview, Tatari recounted decades of suffering behind bars before his long ordeal ended with Assad’s fall on Dec. 8, 2024.
“The main reason for my arrest in 1981 was incitement not to carry out military orders,” Tatari said, adding that the regime would list one charge for detention while courts issued rulings on different grounds.
The courts avoided mentioning the original charge “as it condemned the regime,” he said.
“Our refusal of the army’s practices against the people was the reason for the alleged incitement,” he explained.
“There was no court at all, a man named Suleiman al-Khatib tried us. He was not a judge and had not studied law. He was not even a lawyer, but merely an army officer who handled our trial,” he said.
Tatari said he spent three years in an intelligence branch in Damascus, a year and a half in Mezzeh Military Prison, 15 years in Tadmor, 10 years in Sednaya, five years in Adra, six years in Suwayda, and three years in Tartous.
“Our suffering was not in Sednaya. It was in Tadmor,” he recalled. “It was not a prison but a detention camp. In prison, there are rights. In a detention camp, you have no rights, and a person can be killed at any moment.”
“The 15 years in Tadmor were very difficult, including three and a half years I spent in solitary confinement,” he added.
“Torture was daily, and there were openings in the ceiling through which they watched us 24 hours a day. We were under constant surveillance and torture,” he said.
In this same prison, forces loyal to Rifaat Assad, the uncle of the ousted president, killed around 1,000 unarmed people in 1980, most of them from the Muslim Brotherhood group.
Sednaya prison
After his transfer from Tadmor to Sednaya, Tatari said the treatment was “acceptable” at first.
“It was called Sednaya prison, not Sednaya detention camp,” he said.
“But in 2011, with the start of the revolution, Sednaya became a detention camp and became similar to what we experienced in Tadmor in terms of harsh treatment and torture aimed at humiliation,” he recalled.
“I did not suffer in Sednaya the same way later detainees from the revolution did,” he said.
Tatari described the Syrian revolution as “100% peaceful,” saying no one wanted to carry weapons.
“The Syrian people were pushed by the regime into an armed revolution,” he said.
“The regime began using excessive force, which pushed people to carry weapons to defend themselves,” he added
Tatari said he was moved after the revolution to civilian prisons, where defected officers and other detainees were tortured.
“We used to bang on the doors and try to stop them from torturing detainees,” he said. “We would tell them: You cannot torture anyone.”
International reports say thousands of detainees were killed systematically and secretly inside Sednaya prison near Damascus, where the ousted regime carried out thousands of executions without trials, at a rate of 50 executions a week between 2011 and 2015 alone.
$20,000 for a visit
Tatari said he saw his family for the first time in 1997, 16 years after his arrest.
“It was the first time I saw my son, and he was 16 years old,” he recalled.
“That visit came after a financial deal, as my family paid $20,000 to make it happen,” he added.
Asked about his morale during his long years in prison, Tatari said moments of despair were inevitable, but he always had a feeling that he would one day be released.
“God planted something in us without us knowing, something that makes us sense what will happen,” he said. “I felt I would get out one day.”
“In the final months, or the final year, it became clear that the regime would fall,” he said.
“Some may think that a person who spent 43 years in prison would be very happy to get out, and I was indeed extremely happy,” he said. “But not because I got out, but because the regime fell.”
“When I left prison, I felt as if all the people were celebrating with me,” he said.
“I left Tartous and saw everyone celebrating sincerely and raising the revolution flag. Their joy was overwhelming,” he added.
“The people’s joy at liberation made me happier than my release from prison, because I felt that the people outside prison had been more imprisoned than I was. So I shared their joy,” Tatari said.
In December 2024, Assad, who ruled Syria for nearly 25 years, fled to Russia, bringing an end to the Baath Party’s decades of rule that began in 1963. A transitional administration led by President Ahmad al-Sharaa was formed in January 2025.
