This article is more than 9 years old

This article is more than 9 years old

Dorothy Parvaz, the Al-Jazeera English journalist who was detained after flying into Syria and then deported in secret to Iran, was finally released after 19 days.

On her arrival in Damascus on 29 April, she was held in a detention centre for three days. She was handcuffed repeatedly and often blindfolded. Then she was deported to Iran.

Parvaz, who holds American, Canadian and Iranian citizenship, was held incommunicado in Tehran, but says she was treated well there.

She has now appeared on Al-Jazeera to tell of her ordeal in Syria (video here. It is a harrowing tale, which she also writes about at length.

She tells of being blindfolded in a "mini-Guantanamo" outside Damascus. On one occasion, she was led into what seemed like a courtyard and heard interrogations, which involved savage beatings, taking place.

Her cell wall was smeared of blood. When questioned, it became clear that the Syrian interrogator equated Al-Jazeera with Human Rights Watch.

The food she was given three times a day was fetid and made her vomit. But she was too hungry to stop eating altogether.

Most of the her days were spent listening to the sounds of young men being brutally interrogated. She writes:

"One afternoon, the beating we heard was so severe that we could clearly hear the interrogator pummelling his boots and fists into his subject, almost in a trance, yelling questions or accusations rhythmically as the blows landed in what sounded like the prisoner's midriff."

After three days, Parvaz's interrogator told her she was free to return to Qatar... but when she got to the airport she "was dragged, kicking and screaming, on to a flight bound for Tehran." She had entered Syria with an Iranian passport.

"Call it a strange brand of extraordinary rendition, if you will," she writes.

The Syrian authorities had informed the Iranians that Parvaz was a spy – a charge that can carry the death penalty in Iran. But, after a couple of weeks of interrogation in Tehran, it was determined that she was a journalist.

So, on Wednesday (18 May), she was released and put on a dawn flight from Tehran to Doha. She writes:

"Although I have written critically of some of Iran's policies, I was treated with respect, courtesy and care thoughout my detention there. My room was spotless, my interrogator flawlessly polite, and the women who looked after me at the Evin Prison Women's Detention Centre saw to it that my every need was met."

Sources: Al-Jazeera English/New York Times