'World's worst prison' where lags eat mice and guards kill using 'human trampoline'
dailystar.co.ukWe've all seen a film that features life behind bars. Often, these dramatisations make prison seem somewhat over-the-top, with a lot of focus on brutality.But there's one prison which was known globally as the worst in the world up until a few years ago: Tadmor.
Amnesty International described the prison as “synonymous with suffering" as inmates were regularly beaten and tortured.The Tadmor prison was in Palmyra in Syria, having been built by the French in the 1930s, in heart of the Arabian deserts.
Originally, it was set to be military barracks, but things changed in the 1980s.Syrian poet Faraj Bayrakdar, who spent four years locked up, described it once as a "kingdom of death and madness".
President Hafiz al-Assad was the main factor in things taking a turn for the worse in Tadmor. After an assassination attempt on his life in 1980, al-Assad's brother Rifaat ordered the Tampor massacre, where between 600 to 1,000 alleged members of the Society of Muslim Brothers were executed.It's believed their bodies were dumped in a mass grave outside the prison.Prisoners were kept isolated from the outside world and forbidden to communicate with each other; being warned that execution could come at any time.The prison was set up in a circular shape, allowing guards to be able to watch all prisoners at any one time.Inmates were not allowed to lift their heads, look up or look at each other.Around 20,000 people were imprisoned between 1980 and 1990, a large chunk of them being political activists.
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