A month has passed since Khetam Benyan was released from detention in Damascus. Since then she has fled her native Syria — but she has been unable to leave her nightmares behind. The 20-year-old law student, daughter of well-off Sunni parents, still suffers from chronic insomnia remembering the horrors she witnessed during her 48 days in jail — the rape, torture, beatings and abuse inflicted on her female cellmates.

“How can I ever forget those people and lead a normal life while most of them are still in those dark cells?” she asks. “Their faces, their pain and their screams are haunting me.

“Everyone tells me, you will forget and adapt. But no — I shall never forget what I saw.”

Ms Benyan’s first-hand encounter