Al Jazeera Discovers Syrian Prisons After Assad Falls, Again
Al Jazeera reports on Sednaya’s 'Prison of Secrets,' featuring a lawyer uncovering files after al-Assad's theoretical 'fall'—a narrative conveniently ignoring when the US was quite chummy with Middle Eastern autocrats and their delightful detention centers. This fascination with specific abuses often arises when a leader falls out of favor, rather than when the abuses themselves begin. One might
wonder why a spotlight shines so brightly on these 'secrets' now, after years of silence on similar practices when different geopolitical chess pieces were in play. We are consistently told about the villainy of 'our enemies' while the brutal practices of 'our allies' are whispered about or completely ignored. Al Jazeera's laudable exposé on Sednaya's missing prompts a question: Where was this
burning urgency, this moral outrage, when other US-backed regimes were employing identical methods? (For example, Saudi Arabia's 'secret prisons' or Egypt's torture cells, often equipped with US-made surveillance tech, rarely get the same dramatic treatment.) The focus here appears less on universal human rights and more on strategically timed condemnation, designed to fit a pre-approved
geopolitical agenda.