Inside Assad’s secret police headquarters: Reporter’s notebook

The Stasi Museum in East Berlin is amazing, not least because it is the actual former headquarters of East Germany’s secret police. You can visit the actual offices where the files of millions of East German citizens were kept. Dissidents were kept in cells. You can walk the halls where those at the center of a sinister police state spied on, terrorized and planned violence against their people.

That’s what we did on Friday in Damascus, Syria. That we were in one of the most famous divisions of the exception Syrian intelligence services.

It was called Branch 235, and its job was to spy not only on the general population but also on other parties in the government.

It was a paranoia that put the power of the Assad regime in the minds of all who worked for the state. No one knew who to trust and he could be taken at any time, gaining total loyalty to Assad. It wasn’t until

In the burned building, we will come across a room full of files still intact. The regime spied a file on each person.

I open a file – a simple green document folder – and find it’s in the possession of a colonel in the Syrian army. Cover notes “Continue to monitor his behavior as he is acting suspiciously.” It’s like reading a spy novel. Except this is real life. The file is dated 2015 – at the height of the anti-government protest movement and the regime’s paranoia. Behind the cover notes, page after page of informant reports about this man.

We find multiple other files, all on individual soldiers, with very specific observations. The regime fell so quickly and the looting and burning continued so fiercely that much evidence of Assad’s crimes is lost. But in this one room, spared from the fire that burned so many others, we saw a small glimpse of Assad’s system of fear.

In the yard, we meet Mohammad, who is taking his chances and returning to the cell where he was arrested 12 years ago. We walk together to the basement, and he shows me where it was kept.

The four men shared the small coffin-shaped cells. We see simple games drawn on the wall where the detainees tried to pass the time. I know Tic-Tac-Toe. We trace the poetry written on the back of one of the doors: “I’m afraid to die, my love, without seeing you again,” says the Arabic verse, scratched in black paint.

I ask Mohammad how he feels about being translated. He smiles. “I can breathe now,” he says.