Baladi News – Hama (Shahhoud Jaddouh)
The Syrian regime forces brought hundreds of soldiers to storm Hama Prison on Friday evening. Reports indicated that the forces are using live ammunition and throwing tear gas, which has so far caused several cases of suffocation among the detainees. A video posted by activists from inside the prison has shown fire, and live ammunition being fired amid cries of distress coming from the detainees.
Yesterday, the regime forces, supported by "Shabiha", were trying to break into the prison. However, the attempt failed due to the strong resistance of detainees as well as the external pressure by the rebels who targeted sensitive zones for the regime. The rebels vowed that such attacks would not stop until all the demands of their "brothers" are answered. As a result, breaking into the prison stopped and negotiations were reinitiated, which resulted in the release of 18 prisoners, but it turned out later that the legal status of these prisoners had been regularized previously, but had not been released until the break up of this rebellion inside the jail.
On the other hand, the detainees had taken one police officer and eight policemen hostages. The officer was released as a gesture of goodwill after the first storming attempt, which paid off with the release of the eight detainees as well as the return of water and electricity supply to the prison.
Today's morning, security forces warned the detainees to stop the mutiny and threatened to storm the prison with force. Until the time of preparing this report, regime forces had been attempting to break in the prison since the afternoon, amid fears that a massacre against the detainees could take place like the one that Maher Al-Assad, brother of the regime president Bashar Al-assad, committed in Sidnaya prison in 2008.
Hama prison contains 800 prisoners, most of whom are opinion detainees, threatened with genocide if the regime forces and allies succeeded in controlling the prison.
Last Monday, the detainees started an insurgency in objection to a reported plan of transferring five political prisoners – who were held on death row – to the notorious prison of Sidnaya in Damascus countryside.