BEIRUT -- Though years have elapsed since they were freed from prisons in Syria run by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah, former detainees still live with the psychological and physical scars.

Ahmed al-Ali, a 30-year-old shepherd, told Al-Mashareq how five men seized him in mid-March 2016 as he tended his sheep in al-Ais village in Aleppo province, he said, and he was taken to a centre in al-Hader area, a Hezbollah stronghold.

"At first, I thought I had been arrested by the regime's forces," he said. "But when they started questioning me, I figured out from their accent that they were Lebanese from Hezbollah."

"I was detained for 17 days that felt like a lifetime," he said. "I was brutally tortured, and the scars are still visible on my body."

"They started questioning me about the armed groups, although I have nothing to do with them; I'm just a simple shepherd. But they didn't believe me."

The Hezbollah elements tied him up and hung him upside down throughout his detention, he recalled. They also whipped him with electric cables and electrocuted him "so I would confess things I have no knowledge about".

Meanwhile, he said, "I saw how they stuffed their cigarettes with hashish and got high using narcotic pills. I also heard them talking about forcing women from the town of al-Hader to have sex with them."

Source: Al-Mashareq