Five reporters in exile describe the risks they have taken and the horror they have witnessed reporting the civil war

The human cost of Syria’s brutal and protracted civil war goes way beyond the number of reported casualties.

Millions have fled in search of refuge and the residents of Aleppo in the north-west of the country have been living under siege, with Syrian and Russian airstrikes destroying their homes, hospitals and food supplies.

Meanwhile journalists in the city – the people we rely on to be the eyes and ears on the frontlines of conflict – risk being kidnapped, tortured and murdered in the line of duty.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists Syria is the most dangerous place in the world to be a journalist. And while the number of journalist deaths have fallen since war broke out in 2011, it is not because attacks stopped but because there are fewer left to be killed.

So what happens to reporters who stick their heads above the parapet? And is it ever possible to provide balanced reporting from a civil war? Five journalists, now living in exile in Turkey, share their experiences in their own words.

‘Young men died, their bodies discarded like animals’



Whenever I hear the word Aleppo I think of my friend, a lawyer called Ibrahim Malki. This time last year he and I were fellow detainees in a crowded cell where we slept next to each other – it was only three metres long and six metres wide but was home to more than 20 prisoners.



We’d both been arrested by the regime. I had been accused of sending news to opposition media. Ibrahim was arrested for being a political and human rights activist.

After 20 days of talking and sharing torture sessions our friendship was cemented

After 20 days of living together, talking and sharing torture sessions our friendship was cemented. But soon we would be transferred to different facilities.



While I continued to be tortured, accused of being a terrorist, Ibrahim was witnessing his worst nightmare in a tiny cell in the capital, Damascus: he later told me how he watched young men die, their bodies thrown out like animals.

A month later, I was released after paying a bribe to a regime officer. A week after that, I heard that Ibrahim had also been released. Soon the regime started harassing me again so I left for Turkey; Ibrahim moved to Switzerland after the regime shut down his law firm.

We talk weekly on Skype and he always says how what is happening in Aleppo breaks his heart, his beloved city that President Bashar al-Assad is trying to destroy.

Samer al-Ahmad, a reporter at Nasaem Syria FM

‘144 days of torture left me almost unable to move’

All I remember about the day I was released was standing at the entrance of the military hospital in Barzah, Damascus, naked apart from a blanket. After 144 days of torture I was almost unable to move.



I had been transferred around several intelligence departments and spent the last two months in a department known as the “human slaughterhouse”.

But then one day, after all they had put me through, it was decided that I wasn’t a threat to national security and I was transferred to the hospital where the doctors set me free.

I walked out overwhelmed, and suddenly realised that everyone was staring at me. My appearance was pathetic and I smelt, but people were smiling at me like a special salute. They knew that this was my second chance, my chance to be reborn.

My eyes needed time to adapt to the light of the sun, my ears were filled with noise but the street smelt like heaven.

A man selling water was one of the first things I saw. I took the first bottle and drank it in seconds, then the second, the third and the fourth. It was the first clean water I had had in months. The man refused to take my money. He was obviously used to seeing people like me.

The water seller asked “where do you live?” I told him that I was from Rukneddin, a suburb in Damascus, and he found a driver to drop me home. The driver also refused to take any money. His son was also a detainee.

Jawad Abu al-Mana, editor-in-chief of Souriatna

‘I stepped on a dead body and decided to stop reporting on explosions’

I decided to become a journalist when war broke out. It was a hurried decision and perhaps not the wisest given the systematic targeting of journalists from both sides of the conflict.



For four years, I’d make the long journey to my university to learn how to be a journalist as the mortars fell around me, but I was also learning on the job.

I once spent days in hiding after being threatened over an investigation I published – at night I slept at the hospital, being woken up to the screams of the injured. I remember one of the big explosions I covered in the suburbs of Damascus: we headed down with a camera to cover it as quickly as possible.

The black smoke was blinding and we couldn’t see anything and I suddenly felt that I had stepped on something sticky. I froze, realising it was a dead body. That was the moment I decided to stop reporting on the explosions and start focusing on features, humanitarian stories and investigations.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Journalists watch as Kurdish protesters clash with Turkish police and soldiers close to the Turkish-Syria border. Photograph: Sedat Suna/EPA

I joined the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (Arij) network and won a prize for one of my stories about the gangs who were forging documents and taking over the homes of tens of thousands of people who had fled the fighting. Then, a year ago, I was conscripted to the regime’s army and decided to flee for Turkey.

Today I am trying to pick up the pieces of my memory and finish my education in exile. It’s frustrating trying to report on Syria from outside, but I still have some contacts inside who help get information, and I’d rather that than be thrown on to the frontlines of death.

Ahmed Haj Hamdo, a journalist with the Arij network

‘The regime prevents Syrians telling their stories even when they leave’

I spent the first three years of the revolution moving between areas under the regime’s control. I witnessed people’s sadness, their fear and the deaths of their loved ones but persuading them to talk was the hardest part.



Everyone is scared to speak and even if they agree they only talk about what they should say, not what they want to say. Even if you are able to reassure them that you won’t reveal their names and identities you can feel their fear and confusion coming through in their words, but with time some people slowly started to trust me.

I was using a pseudonym to protect my identity so people were seeing an unknown person talking to unknown witnesses, and while this documentation is still important it is not the ideal way to do journalism.

Once, I wanted to document the story of a friend who was forced to fight in the regime forces: he was not pro-regime but he was not on the revolution’s side either – he didn’t want to fight anyone.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Even when Syrians reach Turkey they are afraid to tell their stories. Photograph: Yasin Akgul/AFP/Getty Images

We tried to document his story during one of his holidays but it was impossible. Leaving out personal information rendered the story meaningless, but anything that hinted at either of our identities would have put us in danger.

Three years later we met in Istanbul, where we laughed, cried and talked for hours. He was preparing himself to go to Europe after successfully escaping from Syria.

But even in exile writing his story was impossible because it could implicate his family and friends who helped him to come to Turkey and are still living in areas under the regime’s control. A regime that is depriving Syrians from telling their stories even when they leave.

Sadek Abdul Rahman, a pseudonym used by an editor and writer at Al-Jumhuriya

‘We reached a Turkish village and our first safe sunrise in three years’

One day last September, after an excessive attack from jets and helicopters on my region of Idlib in northern Syria I decided it was time to to travel with my family, my wife and two kids, towards Turkey in search of safety.



We arrived at the border at 8am with more than 50 other families and waited under the shadeless olive trees 500 metres from the border.

We didn’t have passports, so it was not possible for us to enter Turkey legally. Our only way was to cross illegally, which we soon learned was very dangerous.

Our first attempt to cross the borders failed and some of us almost got killed by gunfire from Turkish soldiers on the border. One man was shot in the leg and women and children were screaming and crying.

The day passed. Night came and people were cold and tired. I convinced my family to attempt another crossing, but the Turkish guards opened fire again.

I lay on my two children and wife to protect them from the bullets that were passing above our heads. My eight-year-old daughter cried and begged me: “Take me back home, I don’t want Turkey.”

We fled to a nearby village where we found a mosque that we could rest in and found many people like us. At 3am we went back tried again and found a 1.5-metre-deep ditch to crawl through.

With my wife, holding my six-month-old in one arm and the eight-year-old in another, we reached a Turkish village and our first safe sunrise in three years.

Raed Razzouk, editor-in-chief, Zaitoun magazine

Translated by Eiad Abdullatif and Lynn Chammaa