Torture and ill-treatment is most often used during the interrogation period,
which can last for up to 180 days. According to Addameer, the most routine
methods of ill-treatment detainees are subjected to include:
“sleep deprivation by means of continuous and prolonged interrogation
sessions, excessive use of handcuffs for extensive periods and their
tightening to cut off circulation; beatings; slapping; kicking; verbal abuse
and intentional humiliation; and the use of threats directed at the detainee
or a family member, including threats of arrest of a family member, threats
of sexual assault against the detainee or his/her family member, threats of
house demolitions, and threats of killing.”
‘Special methods’ are used to a lesser degree and often include:
“the use of painful stress positions, where the detainee is bent backwards
over the seat of a chair causing back pain, or forced to stand for prolonged
periods against a wall with bent knees; pressure on different parts of the
body; strong shaking of the detainee; strangulation and other means of
suffocation. Inside the cells: long periods of solitary confinement in small,
windowless and, often, cold cells; sleep deprivation; deprivation of the
right to basic hygiene products.”218
“I was last arrested in April 2016, for two months during which I was tortured
multiple times. What happened to me in the military camp where I was detained
is something that I have never experienced before in my life. They would
leave me naked, they only allowed me to keep my underwear on [boxers].
They made me sit on a small piece of concrete, my arms and legs tied up and
whenever anyone passed by me they used to put their cigarettes out on my
arms. You can still see the scars from the burns on my arms. But it wasn’t only
my arms, they started with the arms, but then they started burning my sensitive
parts [genitalia] and then my legs and neck. They also used really hot water on
me, throwing it on me every once and while. Then there were the coffee cups:
they got me two coffee cups [small traditional coffee cups] and wanted me to
put them on my knees and then kneel on them without touching the ground
with my feet. They used to leave me balancing on those coffee cups sometimes
for two hours. They didn’t talk to me much; the only thing they used to say
was ''why are you coming to stab us?'' They also knew that there is a piece of
platinum in my head from a previous injury and they used to hit me on my
head a lot on purpose. In 2015 I got imprisoned for month and a half and they
also hit me on my head and I lost the ability to speak for a few months. They
brought many specialists but they couldn't help at the time.
I don’t know why they tortured me like that this time… what I felt is that they
are trying to send me a message through this torture, and it was like they are
218 Addameer, Torture and Ill-Treatment, op. cit.
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