During more than nine months of protest against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, it is Syria's media activists who have ensured that the outside world knows what is really going on
Video: Arab League monitor: I saw snipers with my own eyes
By Christine Marlow, in Douma and Nick Meo in Beirut
8:00AM GMT 01 Jan 2012
Naked on the concrete floor of the interrogation room, hands tied behind his back and a blindfold covering his eyes, the boy listened to the slowly approaching footsteps of the Syrian intelligence officer. The pained screams of his brother came from the next room.
"Where is the media rat? Where is Ali?" the interrogator rasped into his ears. He felt someone clamp cables to his toes and push him back into the shallow pool of water as the voltage was turned up for his next electric shock.
The two teenagers had been detained after Syrian officers found loudspeakers at their home in the restive Damascus suburb of Douma which they said could be used at demonstrations.
Kept in a political intelligence base in the capital, for two months they were alternately interrogated and tortured for information on opposition activists operating in their town. Their questioners especially focused, the brothers said, on who was documenting crackdowns by the regime on demonstrations for dissemination to the foreign media.
During more than nine months of protest against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, culminating in some of the largest demonstrations ever two days ago on the last Friday of the year, it is Syria's media activists who have ensured that the outside world knows what is really going on.
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The number and scale of the protests, and the barbarity with which they have often been suppressed, have been witnessed by hundreds of millions of people abroad - not least in nearby Arab countries.
Last week a 66-strong team of Arab League observers was finally admitted into the country, forced on the reluctant government as the price of avoiding tougher sanctions from its neighbours - and agreed to by Mr Assad in what may yet turn out to be a final desperate gamble to stay in power.
Under the peace plan being monitored by the League, the government is supposed to pull its forces out of the centres of towns where an estimated 5,000 civilians have been killed in the brutal crackdown on protest.
But in Douma there were reports that troops used teargas and nail bombs to disperse the demonstrations, causing hideous injuries to some.
Once again, all the outside world could see of Friday's events came from video images illicitly sent by activists around Syria - people like the two brothers from Douma whom The Sunday Telegraph met just an hour after their release.
Thin and pallid, with dark circles under their eyes and their hair only just beginning to grow back after it was all shaved off, they quickly convened with the man whose identity and whereabouts they had been striving to protect - an activist known as Ali who for months has filmed crackdowns in the town and given frequent interviews to foreign news channels.
"They wanted to know everything about you Ali," said one of the brothers. "They interrogated us separately to play mind games with us. They told me, 'Your brother knows where Ali is and has told us. You should tell us too.'"
The other boy said: "I had so many electric shocks because of you! But I didn't tell them anything."
Concerned for his security, Ali asked: "How did they know you were connected to me? I didn't visit your home before, we didn't speak on the phone."
The boy shrugged. "They had many stories about you, they have been trying to follow you."
With foreign journalists banned from operating independently inside the country, shaky hand-held camera images and Skype conversations with activists have been crucial to the world's understanding of events in Syria, and have played a large part in building outside pressure on the regime.
All such activity is illegal, said activists. "Many friends have been taken to prison and tortured; their crime was speaking to someone on Facebook. Speaking on Skype, this is the biggest offence," said Ali.
When Ali decided to take on this life he left behind his wife and child and, with three colleagues, went underground, living in a safe house that they change every two months to evade capture.
Details, said the men, could be the difference between life and death; women's and a child's shoes lay scattered casually by the front door, to give the impression of a family home. Metal crossbars erected across the inside of the front door could buy precious seconds for escape in the event of a sudden unexpected search.
Four mattresses lay on the floor and an old television sat in the corner broadcasting Al Jazeera. A tiny window high in a corner let in a crack of light and a bare light bulb hung overhead. The men huddled around an electric heater, focusing on their laptops and working silently but for Skype conversations with overseas news channels, or opposition coordinators in other cities. They paused only to eat or pray.
"This is our life. We go outside only to film or report. The rest of the time, this room and the internet are our world," said Yahya, 17, the youngest of the four.
When electricity was cut and mobile telephone signals jammed to block communications, the activists responded by buying generators and satellite communications equipment - smuggled into Syria from Turkey and Lebanon.
They play a game of cat and mouse with security forces, that often brings them close to danger.
"Do you see the army there? You are my sister. You are deaf and dumb!" Ali whispered as he took The Sunday Telegraph - face covered, and disguised in local dress - on a night time tour of Douma.
A soldier stepped forward as if to stop him, and then thought better of it. "You see, they are everywhere. On every corner, on every street. Watching us," said Ali, ducking down a side alley to avoid a military checkpoint beside Douma's central mosque. "If they knew who you were I would be captured, tortured and killed.
A colleague described leaping from a second floor window to evade capture.
"A television crew had been streaming live video of anti-regime protests from our location," said Omar. "A few days later we were attacked by security forces. We saw them run down the street and into our building. We had no choice but to jump."
"I broke my leg," said Hassan, another of the four. "It was a painful day, they took all of our cameras, and out equipment."
Others were not so lucky. "A friend of mine went to see his family. He slept in his own bed for just one night. But that was the night they came to arrest him," said Hassan.
"He was forced to tell everything. They tortured him badly, and promised to release him if he spoke. Now he is free but we can't talk to him. He is dangerous. His phone is tapped, his movements are watched."
Ali added: "Once one person is arrested, the whole circle of contacts is at risk. We try to know as little as possible about each other. I don't want to know anyone's real names, because if I am captured I might not have a choice over the information I give."
Signs of the strain being felt by the embattled Assad regime are visible even in the centre of Damascus, according to fresh accounts from fleeing Syrians who talked to The Sunday Telegraph in neighbouring Lebanon last week.
The government sent thuggish security forces on to the streets of the capital, which until recently have been mostly quiet. A Syrian student aged 28, who uses the name Abdullah, said: "You can often hear shooting now and sometimes bombs as well. People are scared – they are sending each other texts to say where the shooting is.
"You can see fear in people's eyes. I live in a modern, prosperous area in the centre of town. We're just not used to this."
Speaking in Beirut, where he arrived on Thursday, he described how checkpoints had suddenly proliferated across Damascus along with security forces and sometimes even tanks, to the dismay of better-off residents who until recently had seen little of the uprising.
He said his greatest shock was an encounter with regime thugs known as Shabihaa, outside a well-known mosque in the district of Kafarsouseh.
"There were 50 of these ugly guys with short hair and long sticks, gathered because there had been some protesters around. Afterwards I heard that they had attacked the sheikh of the mosque – they just lash out at anyone. Members of his congregation told me that when the sheikh was taken to hospital, a crew turned up from national television with secret police in tow, and they told him to say he was attacked by terrorists or they would torture him.
"The sheikh refused, saying that he was only scared of God."
Other Syrians recently arrived in Beirut also described a new mood of fear. One woman said things had got much worse since the two bomb attacks shortly before Christmas, which killed scores of people and which the regime claimed were carried out by al-Qaeda terrorists.
"You can feel the tension on the streets now. It is different to before. There are far fewer people around," she said.
Another man said that the regime's claim that the bomb attacks had been carried out by terrorists had been openly mocked. "Even a taxi driver was cursing Assad for those bombs," he said. "And everybody knows that most of those taxi drivers are on the payroll of the secret police."
Many Damascenes had their first taste of protest last week. Emboldened by the presence of Arab League officials in the country, thousands travelled to suburbs of the city where massive demonstrations were staged, especially Douma and Midan. They alert each other by text message, or Facebook and Twitter when they are able to access the internet, swapping rumours of the appearance of Arab League monitors. Protesters hope their presence will deter the army from opening fire on them.
Among some Syrians, President Assad's support still looks strong. "Many people in Syria still like him and don't want him to resign," one young woman said. "Many of us don't care about democracy."
Those like the media activists of Douma who have committed their lives to telling the world about the protests, however, insist that they will continue their work for as long into 2012 as takes for the Assad regime to be toppled.
And there is no going back to their families or real homes for any of them. "We will be killed if we do that, and all these months will have been in vain," said Yahya.
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