Amouda torture of a young man and two children by the Turkish gendarmerie
On the evening of Wednesday, June 22, 2022, a young man and two children tried to enter Turkey illegally through a smuggling route off the Kurdish-majority town of Amuda, north of Hasaka, adjacent to the Turkish border. But the Jandarma members shot, arrested and brutally beat them for more than an hour, before throwing them from the top of the border wall towards Syrian territory.
The Turkish government follows strict measures to prevent asylum seekers from crossing into its territory, especially from Syria, including the systematic policy of assault (beating, humiliating and torturing asylum seekers), carried out by Turkish gendarmerie elements deployed along the border wall.
Since the end of 2015, Turkey has started building the border wall with Syria, which is 911 kilometers long along the states of Hatay, Kilis, Gaziantep, Urfa and Mardin. The wall consists of concrete blocks, each of which is four meters high, three meters wide and weighs seven tons.
On April 24, 2022, Turkey announced the completion of the construction of 837 km of the wall. The construction of the wall contributed to limiting the intrusion of asylum seekers into Turkish territory, but at the same time made them victims of torture during their arrest while crossing the wall equipped with modern technical equipment.
Syrians for Truth and Justice had documented the occurrence of four similar cases of torture during the first five months of this year, as well as dozens of similar cases and methods of torture and killing that occurred during 2021.
“Syrians” obtained the testimony of three people who tried to enter Turkey illegally and were tortured by the gendarmerie, they are the young Dildar Majid Suleiman (18 years old), the child Delyar Majid Suleiman (16 years old), and the child Malik Ghadban (16 years old), who hail from the village of Sanjak Saadoun, affiliated to the city of Amwad, north of Al-Hasakah Governorate.
The three tried to cross the border by jumping over the border wall in coordination with one of the local “smugglers.” As they reached the wall and tried to cross it, the border guards fired at them, then arrested and beat them before the elements threw them from the top of the wall.
A member of the family of (Dildar and Dilyar) said in his interview with “Syrian”, quoting the victims, as follows:
“Dilar and Deldar with Malik left the house at about ten o’clock at night from the village and headed towards the city of Amuda, where they met the smuggler there, and they set out from near the (Saleem Sayed) school in the vicinity of the city. At about ten thirty at night, they climbed the border wall and were surprised there by the presence of an ambush and the Turkish army began shooting at them, then the three stopped moving, and the elements reached them and beat them with sticks and hoses.”
A relative of the young men (another source) quoted Delyar as saying:
“The number of officers who arrested us was about 25. They beat us for a while, and then one of them asked us: Are you Muslims? Are you Kurds or Arabs? They continued to beat us severely all over our body. They beat us with sticks, cables, and hoses. They forced us to take off our clothes and took the things we had.
During the beating, I lost consciousness from the severity of the beating and they thought I was dead.
We stayed like this for about an hour and a half, after which they threw us from the top of the wall to the other end, and we walked away from the wall until we reached the tent of a shepherd who gave us clothes and helped us reach the People’s Hospital in Amuda, then we called our people. Fortunately, there were no permanent or serious injuries, I had head and eye injuries and a broken leg with bruises all over the body, as well as Dildar and Malik.”
One of the relatives of the three young men sent to “Syrians” pictures that showed the effects of the torture they were subjected to, the same pictures that were circulated about the news of the torture of the three young men on social media the day after the incident occurred.
