Doctors report

The trauma of children from Assad’s torture chambers

Place of horror: Sednaya prison north of Damascus.(Bild: APA/AFP/OMAR HAJ KADOUR)

Thousands died in the torture cellars of Syria's ruler Bashar al-Assad. The survivors have had to struggle with trauma for the rest of their lives. Many of them are children, as reported by Doctors Without Borders.

"The boy doesn't know what a cookie is, or a bird, or a tree," says Omar al Omar, a psychologist from Doctors Without Borders in a hospital in Salqin, not far from the Syrian-Turkish border. "He knows no roads, no toys. He has spent eight years of his life in prison. Eight years in which he saw his mother being tortured and sexually abused."