Mazen Darwish is a Syrian human rights activist, journalist, and president of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), which he set up in 2014 in Damascus. The organization documented numerous violations of the right to freedom of expression and freedom of the press. It also worked on journalists' working conditions and assisted media professionals in disputes with the authorities. When the government refused to allow the organization to be officially registered, they went underground to continue their work.
Darwish was imprisoned several times on account of his work. One of these arrests occurred in April 2008, after Darwish and his colleagues reported on uprisings in Adra, a city near Damascus. Darwish was sentenced to ten days' imprisonment for "defamation and slander of state authority." Following the start of the peaceful mass protests against President Bashar al-Assad in the spring of 2011, the SCM began documenting the names of activists who had been imprisoned, disappeared or killed.
In 2012, he was named Journalist of the Year by Reporters without Borders. In February, Darwish and his colleagues were arrested at their offices by Air Force Intelligence. "After my arrest I was brought to various different secret military prisons, they kept taking me from one torture jail to the next," Darwish said in an interview with DIE ZEIT. He says the conditions in the torture centers are catastrophic. Aside from the lack of hygiene and cramped conditions, he also describes the torture methods, including: electric shocks, hanging detainees by the hands, beatings and sleep deprivation.
More than 70 human rights organizations campaigned for years for the release of the SCM team. The UN General Assembly and the European Parliament also called for their release. Darwish was freed in August 2015 on the condition that he appear one month later before the anti-terror court in Damascus. On 31 August 2015, the court held that the cases of Darwish and his colleagues were covered by an amnesty that had been declared in 2014. The judge also explicitly rejected the central charges of supporting terrorism.
Darwish, who has first-hand experience of the methods used and the conditions in Syrian prisons, told ECCHR that "torture was not an isolated case in Assa's prisons, it was something that was systematically used." As a key witness to the events in Syria, Darwish continues to be involved in the fight for justice in his country.