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The building, on the outskirts of Damascus, is hidden behind a high surrounding wall. Access to the dreaded premises requires special authorisations from Syria’s interior and information ministries. Branch 235, also known as the Palestine Branch (Far Falastin in Arabic) was a military intelligence division created in the 1970s to monitor Palestinian groups operating in Syria. It later became a major torture centre where hundreds of thousands of Syrians – men, women, and children – were imprisoned and tortured under the regimes of Hafez and Bashar al-Assad.
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Soldiers from the army of Syria’s transitional president Ahmed al-Sharaa now guard this place, which has been empty of prisoners since the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime on December 8, 2024. Past the heavy electric gate, the noise of the busy highway fades away. Time seems to stand still here. Literally. On the walls, slogans glorifying Assad have not yet been erased: “Al-Assad forever,” “Martyrdom is the path to victory,” “With our leader Bashar, we continue on the road.”
In the courtyard, junk furniture is piled up haphazardly. Metal beds, armchairs, desks, and all kinds of objects, remnants of a bygone era, lie scattered under a scorching sun. At the edge of the courtyard stands a hulking seven-storey building.
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The escorted prison visit is limited to the sprawling basements of the building. Behind a barricaded door, we descend into the bowels of the Palestine Branch – in almost total darkness. This is where the prisoners were tortured, raped and held in inhumane conditions. The “126 steps” that former inmate Asma counted are here. “In my cell, I told myself that I mustn't forget anything: the number of steps in the wing, the number of steps to the officer's office, the number of bars on the bed frame,” recounted the former detainee, who was tortured and raped here for 18 consecutive days.
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A mobile phone flashlight barely illuminates the endless staircase. The white walls have been blackened by moisture and flames. Before fleeing, Assad’s soldiers set fire to everything they could, destroying evidence of the regime's crimes.
At the bottom of the stairs, a corridor catches some sunlight from an overhead skylight. This is the soldiers’ quarters, where the dormitories are littered with beds, mattresses, wardrobes, uniforms, boots, and hygiene products left behind. A 2012 diary was spared by the flames. Its pages are blackened with the names of men and women who passed through the branch. Empty bottles are scattered here and there. Arak, whisky, vodka, and other bottles are reminders of the testimonies of former inmates about their jailers’ invariable drunkenness during the rapes carried out within these walls.
Walls that track time and tell hellish stories
The first cells, the prisoner isolation rooms, are not far from the soldiers’ quarters. They are tiny rooms, barely 2 square metres, with heavy metal doors displaying numbers. There are a few small skylights, barely enough to let the daylight in. The white walls are covered with inscriptions by the prisoners in Arabic: “Oh Lord, relieve us,” “This period will eventually pass,” “Trust no one, not even your brother.” There are also numbers and drawings etched on the walls. Some are terrifying: they tell the stories of inmates who thought they would never get out. The walls here have become veritable books, expressions of a desperate struggle not to forget, not to lose track of time, not to lose one's mind and simply go mad in this place.
The stale, damp air is barely stirred by the incessantly whirring ventilation system. On the other side of the soldiers' dormitory, the rooms look like offices and the journey becomes sordid. A kind of vestibule leads to the collective cells, which were once overcrowded with prisoners. Squat toilets are lined up along the side. The guards took the prisoners to the toilets, where they were subjected to bullying. “When we wanted to go to the toilet, we were beaten on the way there,” recalled Houda. “I still suffer from incontinence today.” According to testimonies, prisoners were only allowed to relieve themselves two or three times a day. “We could go to the toilet at 5am and 5pm. You had three minutes, and if you overstayed by even three seconds, they would open the door,” said Asma.
Dozens of medicine boxes, including paediatric medicine, lie on the floor of the large room. Clothes and underwear are scattered around. A pink cotton bra lies on a dusty table. A silver object catches the light. It’s a vaginal speculum, a gynaecological instrument that was undoubtedly misused to inflict abuse on the detainees. Many former prisoners mentioned the “inhumane” intimate searches and penetration by metal objects.
Underwear everywhere
It gets darker as we approach the women's cells. A small corridor separates them on either side. Behind metal, numbered doors are vast rooms where prisoners were crammed together. Dozens … 40, 60, 100 ... it’s impossible to know how many women were packed in here. Many former inmates recall having to sleep standing up or take turns sleeping. The walls, blackened by mould, are covered with sometimes illegible markings of dates, names and drawings of desperation.
Small white bowls, probably food bowls, are stacked and hung on a wall. “In Palestine, there was nothing to eat,” recounted Asma. “We were given bulgur wheat in a plastic box. We had to eat with our hands. There were bugs in the food. Everything was disgusting … The guard would urinate in the water tank and force us to drink it."
The rows of prison cells, so many of them, feature the same scenes of survival. Laundry still hangs on a clothesline. Blankets, underwear, children’s clothes lie strewn on the floor in cell after cell after cell. Former prisoners have told FRANCE 24 that they lived almost naked in this place. Upon arrival at the Palestine Branch, they were stripped of their hijabs and clothes and left to live in their underwear. It was a way of humiliating them. It was also a form of psychological torture, as nudity is taboo in Syrian society.
A beam of light from a mobile phone sends cockroaches scurrying. But insects swarm everywhere. Lice, fleas, and other parasites were commonplace in Syria’s prisons. “Everyone suffered from scabies, but the worst were the bedbugs,” recounted Asma. “We were not treated.” Diseases spread rapidly, aided by overcrowding and poor hygiene. For the Palestine Branch’s female inmates, showers, or the ability to wash or rinse from a bucket of water, were unheard of even during menstruation and after brutal rapes. “For 18 days, I had no water to clean myself,” noted Asma.
The corridors are labyrinthine. They run parallel and perpendicular and it’s difficult to find your way in the increasingly deep darkness. The atmosphere becomes stifling. Distressing. How many women, men, and children have experienced the torments of these dungeons? How many have survived the systematic torture that is the hallmark of Branch 235? How many have been raped? Will we ever know the exact figures after Assad’s officers methodically destroyed the records and documents before abandoning the premises? “The Palestine Security Branch was one of the worst in Syria, but it was not the only one,” said Dr. Al Sharif, from the Syrian NGO Lawyers and Doctors for Human Rights (LDHR), noting that the different detention centres “competed to do the most harm” to their prisoners. “The jailers could be promoted if they committed the most acts of sexual torture," he observed.
The visit comes to an end, and we return to the lobby, where a soldier shows us two photos and an ID card found somewhere in the recesses of this den of horror. One is a mugshot of a young boy. The other shows two women. These are the faces of people whose lives have undoubtedly been shattered by detention, fear, physical or psychological torture, like those of Asma and Houda. These photos will remain in the basements of the Palestine Branch, in this antechamber of hell, waiting, perhaps one day, to be used as evidence to judge the crimes committed during the Assad era.
This article has been translated from the original in French.