Prison
Prison Song
In 2018, Kurdish musician Hozan Cane traveled from her home in Germany to northwestern Turkey to sing for a pro-Kurdish election campaign. The Turkish authorities swiftly arrested and imprisoned her on trumped-up charges. Her ordeal encapsulates a worrying trend in the country, where human rights abuses are on the rise.
Traces of Brutality
Following the shock overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad regime, thousands of prisoners allegedly fled Damascus’ Palestine Branch prison, as they had from other massive prisons such as Sednaya. The chaos that remains reveals the regime’s brutality and leaves many chasing rumors in a search for survivors.
Hope and Despair at Assad’s ‘Human Slaughterhouse’
New Lines reports from Sednaya Prison, where Syrians brave horrors in a desperate search for lost loved ones.
A Libyan Revenant
For one militia commander, a battlefield defeat was payback to the aspiring Libyan strongman Gen. Khalifa Haftar. But it also illustrates in stark clarity how the Middle East’s proxy wars and ideological rivalries have spilled across borders, ensnaring both the innocent and not so innocent.
A Notorious Prison and Libya’s War of Memory
Abu Salim was once notorious as the prison where Gadhafi’s opponents were imprisoned, all but forgotten. But in a few short years, conflict has changed the memory of that place and the prison has become embroiled in the contested narratives of post-revolution Libya.
Jailing Jihadists in the West
Western prison systems still struggle to incarcerate notorious jihadists or ideologues. One major case was that of Abu Qatada, dubbed “Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man.”