Some spoke or sent messages on smartphones they acquired through smuggling or by bribing guards — not unusual in Syrian prisons. “The regime is using the policy of starvation and subjugation and exhaustion of detainees’ health to break the prison,” Mr. Moosa said from an insurgent-held area where he runs a shelter for released prisoners. Now, the prisoners’ negotiators, Yaser Bargash and Ramez Bakoor, insist that the whole group be released at once, inmates and lawyers said. Mr. Moosa added that intelligence officials were preventing General Taha from getting his diabetes medicine sent into the prison. Among the inmates’ demands were the release of political prisoners and an end to arbitrary trials.

Source: New York Times May 31, 2016 02:26 UTC