He was tortured with razor-sharp bamboo, fed alive to jungle ants and half-drowned in a freezing well. Now a new film tells the story of the Vietnam War's most incredible escape. Nov 02, 2013  Torture in the South wasn't as sophisticated. The American POWs were usually put into an open pit with bamboo bars over it, and left to broil in the sun. All POWs were subject to casual beating. In a reality, while there was not Russian Roulette, empty pistols were put to.

Flying low over the dangerous and impenetrable Laotian jungle on a bombing mission against the Viet Cong, U.S. Air Force Colonel Eugene Deatrick saw a lone figure waving to him from a clearing below.He continued on his flight path, but ten minutes later - puzzled that a native in this hostile terrain would try to attract his attention - he decided to turn back for another recce.This time, he saw the letters SOS spelt out on a rock.

Beside them stood an emaciated man dressed in rags, waving the remains of a parachute over his head and signalling desperately.Scroll down for more. Deatrick radioed headquarters, who told him that no Americans had been shot down in the area, and instructed him to carry on. But the man continued waving, mouthing over and over again: 'Please don't leave.' Eventually, at Deatrick's insistence, two rescue helicopters were scrambled. Dropping a cable down to the frantic figure, they winched him on board.

Fearful that he could be a Viet Cong suicide bomber, the crew pinned the six stone man to the helicopter deck and searched him - his backpack turned out to contain only a half-eaten snake.Almost beyond speech, the man whispered: 'I am an American pilot. Please take me home.'

Contacting control command, the helicopter eventually received verification: they had found Lieutenant Dieter Dengler, the only American ever to break out of a prisoner of war camp in the Laotian jungle and live to tell the tale.The year was 1966. For two days, he lived on the run in the jungle, strapping his injured left leg with bamboo, before being found by the local Pathet Lao, the Laotian equivalent of the communist Viet Cong.They took him captive and marched him through the jungle.

At night, he was tied spread-eagled on the ground to four stakes to stop him escaping.In the mornings, his face would be so swollen from mosquito bites he was unable to see.Far worse was to come. After an early escape attempt, Dengler was picked up by his guards at a jungle water hole. This was when the torture began.' I had escaped from them, they wanted to get even,' he said.They would hang him upside down by his ankles, with a nest of biting ants over his face, until he lost consciousness. At night, they suspended him in a freezing well so that if sleep came, he feared he would drown.Other times, he was dragged by water buffalo through villages, his guards laughing as they goaded the animal with a whip.Bloodied and broken, he was asked by Pathet Lao officials to sign a document condemning America, but still he refused, so the torture intensified. Tiny wedges of bamboo were inserted under his fingernails and into incisions on his body to grow and fester.' They were always thinking of something new to do to me,' Dengler recalled.'

One guy made a rope tourniquet around my upper arm. He inserted a piece of wood, and twisted and twisted until my nerves cut against the bone. The hand was completely unusable for six months.' After some weeks, Dengler was handed over to the even fiercer Viet Cong. As they marched him through a village, a man slipped Dengler's engagement ring from his finger.

Dengler complained to his guards.They found the culprit, summarily chopped off his finger with a machete and threw him aside, handing the ring back to their horrified captive.' I realised right there and then that you didn't fool around with the Viet Cong,' he said.Finally, Dengler arrived at his destination: a prisoner of war camp. 'I had been looking forward to it,' he said.' I hoped to see other pilots. What I saw horrified me. The first one who came out was carrying his intestines around in his hands.'

There were six other captives: four Thais and two fellow Americans, Duane Martin and Eugene DeBruin. One had no teeth - plagued by awful infections, he had begged the others to knock them out with a rock and a rusty nail in order to release pus from his gums.' They had been there for two and a half years,' said Dengler. 'I looked at them, and it was just awful. I realised that was how I would look in six months.

I had to escape.' Scroll down for more. As food began to run out, tension between the men grew: they were given just a single handful of rice to share while the guards would stalk deer, pulling the grass out of the animal's stomach for the prisoners to eat while they shared the meat.The prisoners' only 'treats' were snakes they occasionally caught from the communal latrine, or the rats that lived under their hut which they could spear with sharpened bamboo.Nights brought their own misery. The men were handcuffed together and shackled to medieval-style foot blocks. They suffered chronic dysentery, and were made to lie in their excrement until morning.After several months, one of the Thai prisoners overheard the guards talking.They, too, were starving and wanted to return to their villages. They planned to march the captives into the jungle, and shoot them, pretending they had tried to escape.Dengler convinced the others that now was the time to make their move. 'I planned to capture the guards at lunchtime, when they put down their rifles to get their food.

There were two minutes and twenty seconds in the day when I could strike.' In that time, Dengler had to release all the men from their handcuffs.' The day came,' he said. 'The cook yelled 'chow time', and I let the handcuffs off. My heart was pounding, I slipped through a loosened fence, and seized three rifles.' He ran into the open, ready to capture the camp.

But the others were nowhere to be seen - they had fled. Only Duane was beside him, vomiting with nerves.Dengler raised a machine gun for the first time in his life. A guard was now two feet from him, waving a machete. Dengler fired.Five dead guards lay at his feet, two others ran zig - zagging into the jungle.

Duane and Dengler escaped into the wild; their fellow prisoners were never seen again.' Seven of us escaped,' said Dengler. 'I was the only one who came out alive.' But escape brought its own torments. Soon, the two men's feet were white, mangled stumps from trekking through the dense jungle.They found the sole of an old tennis shoe, which they alternated wearing, strapping it onto a foot with rattan for a few moments' respite.In this way, they were able to make their way to a fast-flowing river.

'It was the highway to freedom,' said Dengler, 'We knew it would flow into the Mekong River, which would take us over the border into Thailand and safety.' The men built a raft, and floated downstream on ferocious rapids, tying themselves to trees at night to stop themselves being washed away in the torrential water. By morning, they would be covered in mud and hundreds of leeches.So weak that they could barely crawl up the river bank, the men eventually reached a settlement - but the villagers who greeted them were far from welcoming.The pair knelt on the ground and pleaded. Dengler said: 'One man had a machete in his hands. He swung and hit Duane's leg, and blood gushed everywhere. With the next swipe, Duane's head came off.'

'I reached for the rubber sole from his foot, grabbed it and ran. From that moment on, all my motions became mechanical. I couldn't care less if I lived or died.'

Miraculously, it was a wild animal who gave him the mental strength to continue.' I was followed by this beautiful bear. He became like my pet dog and was the only friend I had.' These were his darkest hours. Little more than a walking skeleton after weeks on the run, he floated in and out of a hallucinatory state.' I was just crawling along,' he said.

'Then I had a vision: these enormous doors opened up. Lots of horses came galloping out. They were not driven by death, but by angels. Death didn't want me.'

It was five days later, on July 20th 1966, that Dengler heard an American airplane overhead and, summoning up his last reserves of strength, waved the parachute from an old flare that he had stumbled upon in the jungle to attract the pilot's attention.The signal was spotted by Colonel Deatrick: Dengler's ordeal was at an end.The stricken airman was taken to Da Nang Hospital in Vietnam, where he was interrogated by the CIA. In a further twist to his incredible tale, the pilot was sprung from their care by his fellow airmen, who wanted to bring him home.They rustled him out of his hospital bed into a waiting helicopter and flew him to a hero's welcome aboard his naval carrier.At night, however, he was tormented by awful terrors, and had to be tied to his bed.

In the end, his friends put him to sleep in an cockpit, surrounded by pillows. 'It was the only place I felt safe,' he said.Dengler recovered physically, but never put his ordeal behind him, retiring from the forces to become a civilian test pilot.He said: 'Men are often haunted by things that happen to them in life, especially in war.

Their lives come to be normal, but they are not.' He lived out his remaining years in the San Francisco hills, marrying three times, before succumbing to brain disease aged 62.He was buried with full military honours at Arlington National Cemetery in America, where a squadron of F14s flew over his grave in one final tribute to his remarkable break for freedom.

Middle East

Thousands of Syrian women are believed to be incarcerated in the Assad regime's prisons. Little is known about their fate, but those who manage to escape tell tales of horror. DW's Julia Hahn reports.

Syrian refugee recounts ordeal of torture

Muna Muhammad remembers every tiny detail. The stench in the cells, the pain, her torturers. 'He pulled a black plastic bag over my head and then he hung me from the ceiling, head down,' the 30-year-old says. The memory still haunts her. The guard said he was going to leave her hanging from the ceiling until all her 'evil thoughts land in this bag,' she remembers.

Muna was a music teacher before she was arrested in 2012 for participating in protests against President Bashar Assad in Deir ez-Zor. She was released, then rearrested and taken to the infamous Military Intelligence Branch 215 facility in Damascus — inmates call it 'hell branch' because torture is a daily occurrence.

Read more: Damascus residents reveal how Syria's conflict has altered their lives

Mc groove dance craze lyrics. One day, her torturer showed up with a stun gun. 'He said, 'Muna, where is your heart?' she recalls. 'I pointed at my heart, and that's where he zapped me.'

Locked away

For months, Muna was locked up in solitary confinement or packed together with other inmates. 'One day they interrogated a 16-year-old,' she says. 'I heard her scream. It was so loud. I thought they must be killing her.'

Many women were sexually abused, Muna says, adding that she also faced the threat of rape if she didn't confess.

Hygiene conditions at the prison were a disaster, says Muna, explaining that the inmates were not always allowed access to toilets or showers. There were children, too. 'I remember a woman and her daughter,' Muna says. 'Her cell was very small and dark, the girl cried all the time, and again and again, she tried to peer underneath the door, hoping for a bit of daylight.'

Muna was eventually granted amnesty and released. In 2016, she managed to flee to Turkey, where she still lives today — in Gaziantep, a city that has become a haven for half a million Syrians.

No one knows exactly how many women are imprisoned in Syria. 'More than 7,000,' estimates Fadel Abdul Ghani, head of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a monitoring group that documents human rights violations in the Syrian war.

Ghani's statistics on armed groups show that most of them also involve cases of violence against women — and the Syrian government heads that list. Women are deliberately targeted, he says, because they always played an important role in the opposition against Assad. The regime sees torture and sexual abuse of women as a war strategy, Ghani argues. 'Break the women, and you break the family — and with it opposition in society. That's the goal.'

Human rights activist Fadel Abdul Ghani says the Assad regime uses the torture of women as a war strategy

'Systematic torture and abuse'

In 2017, Amnesty International reported that more than 17,000 people have died since 2011 as a result of torture, abuse and disastrous conditions in prisons run by the Syrian intelligence services and the Syrian government. Up to 13,000 people were executed at the infamous Saydnaya Military Prison north of Damascus, according to the human rights organization, which says the 'systematic, widespread attack by the government on civilians' amounts to 'crimes against humanity.'

Read more: In Syria, expropriation is 'punishment for those who protested'

The Syrian president rejected the report, which is based on statements made by former prisoners, as 'fake news.'

The 'cure project'

Muna wants the world to know what is going on in Syrian prisons. Humiliation was part of the torture, too, she says, recalling an incident where a guard asked a man about his profession. The man said he was a doctor, and the guard ordered him to hop on one leg and say, 'I am a rabbit.' 'At first the doctor spoke very quietly, so they beat him, and then all of us heard him yell: 'I am a rabbit, I am a rabbit.'

Electroshock torture is a regular occurrence in Syrian regime prisons

Muna has written down her story, and she collects other victims' accounts, too. She has started a support group for Syrian women, she calls it 'project recovery.'

'Some women refuse to talk about what happened to them in prison, and others break down and can't stop crying when they talk about it,' Muna says. 'I try to show them they are strong, that the terrible things that happened to them aren't their fault.'

'I tell them, start a new life.'

Muna's new life is in Turkey. But she hopes that one day, she can help bring her torturers in Syria to justice.

• Who's fighting in the Syria conflict?

  War with no end

  Syria has been engulfed in a devastating civil war since 2011 after Syrian President Bashar Assad lost control over large parts of the country to multiple revolutionary groups. The conflict has since drawn in foreign powers and brought misery and death to Syrians.

• Who's fighting in the Syria conflict?

  The dictator

  Syria's army, officially known as the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), is loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and is fighting to restore the president's rule over the entire country. The SAA has been fighting alongside a number of pro-Assad militias such as the National Defense Force and has cooperated with military advisors from Russia and Iran, which back Assad.

• Who's fighting in the Syria conflict?

  The northern watchman

  Turkey, which is also part of the US-led coalition against IS, has actively supported rebels opposed to Assad. It has a tense relationship with its American allies over US cooperation with Kurdish fighters, who Ankara says are linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) fighting in Turkey. Turkey has launched multiple military offensives targeting Kurdish militias.

• Who's fighting in the Syria conflict?

  The eastern guardian

  The Kremlin has proven to be a powerful friend to Assad. Russian air power and ground troops officially joined the fight in September 2015 after years of supplying the Syrian army. Moscow has come under fire from the international community for the high number of civilian casualties during its airstrikes. However, Russia's intervention turned the tide in war in favor of Assad.

• Who's fighting in the Syria conflict?

  The western allies

  A US-led coalition of more than 50 countries, including Germany, began targeting IS and other terrorist targets with airstrikes in late 2014. The anti-IS coalition has dealt major setbacks to the militant group. The US has more than a thousand special forces in the country backing the Syrian Democratic Forces.

• Who's fighting in the Syria conflict?

  The rebels

  The Free Syrian Army grew out of protests against the Assad regime that eventually turned violent. Along with other non-jihadist rebel groups, it seeks the ouster of President Assad and democratic elections. After suffering a number of defeats, many of its members defected to hardline militant groups. It garnered some support from the US and Turkey, but its strength has been greatly diminished.

• Who's fighting in the Syria conflict?

  The resistance

  Fighting between Syrian Kurds and Islamists has become its own conflict. The US-led coalition against the 'Islamic State' has backed the Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias. The Kurdish YPG militia is the main component of the SDF. The Kurds have had a tacit understanding with Assad.

• Who's fighting in the Syria conflict?

  The new jihadists

  'Islamic State' (IS) took advantage of regional chaos to capture vast swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria in 2014. Seeking to establish its own 'caliphate,' IS has become infamous for its fundamentalist brand of Islam and its mass atrocities. IS is on the brink of defeat after the US and Russia led separate military campaigns against the militant group.

• Who's fighting in the Syria conflict?

  The old jihadists

  IS is not the only terrorist group that has ravaged Syria. A number of jihadist militant groups are fighting in the conflict, warring against various rebel factions and the Assad regime. One of the main jihadist factions is Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, which controls most of Idlib province and has ties with al-Qaeda.

• Who's fighting in the Syria conflict?

  The Persian shadow

  Iran has supported Syria, its only Arab ally, for decades. Eager to maintain its ally, Tehran has provided Damascus with strategic assistance, military training and ground troops when the conflict emerged in 2011. The Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah also supports the Assad regime, fighting alongside Iranian forces and paramilitary groups in the country.

Audios and videos on the topic

• Date30.04.2018
• AuthorJulia Hahn (Gaziantep)
• HomepageDW News-
• Related SubjectsWomen's rights, Syria, International Women's Day
• KeywordsSyria,women,Bashar Assad,abuse,torture,prison
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