Syria: Salameh Kaileh is free

21 May 2012. A World to Win News Service. Salameh Kaileh, a prominent Palestine Marxist and political activist who has lived in Syria for many decades, has been released and is now in Amman, Jordan, receiving medical treatment for injuries inflicted by torture during his detention by Bashar al-Assad's security forces. Kaileh was seized by plain clothes men from Syrian Air Force Intelligence at his home in the Damascus suburb of Barzah in the early morning of 24 April. He was taken to Syrian Air Force Intelligence branch in Damascus, where he was insulted and beaten for days. Officers used the falaqa torture method on him, whipping the soles of his feet with a thin bamboo stick, and also used an electric cattle prod. He was the target of insults against Palestinians by officials of this regime that has always sought political legitimacy by claiming to support the Palestinian cause, and often bought at least grudging acceptance from the US by betraying that cause. Kaleih suffers from serious health issues as a result of a successful bout with thyroid cancer, and there were widespread fears for his life in custody. But when he was transferred to a military hospital, he faced even more torture than before. "Unfortunately, the hospital was much worse than what I was subjected to in prison. It was not a hospital, but a slaughterhouse," Kaileh told Amnesty International after his release. Amnesty posted pictures of his injuries online. Kaileh was subjected to frequent and severe beatings while blindfolded and tied to a bed, Amnesty reports. The doctors joined the military officials in shouting insults at the patients, but he was unable to see if they also took part in the beatings. The use of of medical personnel to oversee and perhaps participate in torture is shocking, but it was precisely in order to take advantage of such procedures that the US turned over prisoners to the Syrian regime to be tortured and interrogated during the last decade. On 14 May Kaileh was put on a plane and taken to Amman, Jordan. Born in Birzeit, Palestine, in 1955, like most Palestinian refugees in Arab countries, he was never given citizenship in the county of his residence and has retained a Jordanian passport. Kaileh considers his expulsion illegal and plans to file a lawsuit to win the right to return. The emergency Website freesalamehkaileh.org set up immediately after his arrest reflected some of the strong support that came from throughout the Arab world and Europe. It describes his politics as follows: "Salameh has already spent eight years in Syrian prisons. Syrian activists believe that Salameh has been picked up by the authorities for his writings which are extremely critical of the anti-people Syrian dictatorship and also of the two major opposition groups, the Syrian National Council and the National Coordination Council for Democratic Change, neither of whom, according to Salameh, has faith in the capacity of the Syrian people to bring change or topple the Syrian regime. These activists allege that it is precisely due to his call for a more radical, revolutionary stance, for his criticism of the increasingly accommodating signals coming from the major opposition groups, that the Syrian regime recognised him as a major threat and moved to silence him." It is notable that the US, which claims that its campaign for regime change in Syria is motivated by concern for the safety and rights of the Syrian people, did not raise its voice in defence of this opponent of foreign intervention.