Khalid, 15 years

“They hung me up from the ceiling by my wrists, with my feet off the ground. Then I was beaten.” 

I left Syria because of the constant bombardment, the constant shelling, and the torture. The children are all terrified, they don’t understand what’s happening. 

I was arrested. See these marks? My hands were tied with plastic cord. They were tied so tightly. Children were with me in the cell and their hands were tied in the same way. We’d beg them to untie us, but they would tie the cord tighter. 

Some men came to our village. I tried to escape, but they took me to jail. Except it wasn’t a jail – it was my old school. 

It’s ironic – they took me there to torture me, in the same place I used to go to school to learn. They had taken over the school and made it into a torture centre. 

When I realised that was where we were going, I was so sad, I wanted to cry. 

I was kept there for ten days. For the first two days, we were forced to stand upright. I was blindfolded and my hands were tied with plastic cord. I still have the scars. 

My hands were tied with plastic cord. I still have the scars. 

“They had taken over the school and made it into a torture centre.”

I was terrified. More than 100 of us were kept in a room in the school. One boy was only 12. He was kept in prison for five days. His hands were tied behind him, like me. I remember thinking, “What can he have done? He’s a 12-year-old boy.

” After two days I was taken out of the room to be interrogated. I hadn’t eaten anything or drunk any water, and I was extremely weak. They hung me up from the ceiling by my wrists, with my feet off the ground, then I was beaten. They wanted us to speak, to confess to something. 

Most people only last an hour before they pass out. If you were hung up like that for more than two hours, you’d die. 

I passed out. I passed out from the severe pain of hanging like that, and from the beating. They took me down and threw cold water on my face to wake me up. Then they took turns stubbing out their cigarettes on me. Here, I have these scars. 

The 12-year-old boy who was with me was hung up too, and had cigarette burns on him.

I saw it with my own eyes. Some other people had electricity used on them. I didn’t. I don’t know why them and not me. I don’t think there was a reason – it depended what mood these men were in. They showed no sympathy, no mercy. There were maybe around 70 of them, but I can’t be sure. 

It’s not unusual to see a school used in this way. They’ve used everything – schools, clinics. The place we went to get medicine from is now used for torture. I was so terrified of that place. I still am. 

Another thing they do is to use children to protect themselves. They know we can’t shoot our own children, so they put the children in front – so they’re a human shield – and march into our villages. It’s terrifying for the children. Many of them die.

www.savethechildren.org.uk