Report describes brutal torture in Syria

Basat al reeh." "Dulab." "Falaqa." They are Arabic names for torture techniques that send chills through the hearts of Syrians, particularly the untold thousands who are believed to have been detained during the uprising of the last 15 months.

"We suffered torture all the time," said Tariq, an opposition activist from the port city of Latakia who spent 40 days in solitary confinement in spring 2011.

He told CNN he endured "dulab," in which torturers force the prisoner's legs and head into a car tire before beating them, and "basat al reeh," in which the prisoner is tied to a board and beaten.

"They threw cold water on our naked bodies and they also urinated on us ... they are really good at what they do," said Tariq, who now is in Turkey helping mobilize men and weapons to rebels inside Syria.

Illustrations from the Human Rights Watch report show torture techniques called "basat al reeh," left, and "dulab." The group commissioned a Syrian artist for the sketches based on descriptions from former detainees and defectors.

According to a report published Tuesday by the New York-based human rights organization Human Rights Watch, the Syrian government has been carrying out "a state policy of torture" as part of an effort to crush dissent throughout the unrest.

Human Rights Watch identified 27 detention centers across Syria where torture was systematically inflicted on prisoners, according to testimonies from more than 200 former prisoners and security officers who defected.

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"It is a network of torture chambers that the authorities are using to intimidate and punish people who dare to oppose the government," said Ole Solvang, a Human Rights Watch researcher.

"Nobody knows how many people are being detained, how many are being tortured," he added. "But one local activist group has collected names of 25,000 people in detention. The numbers are absolutely staggering."

Human Rights Watch titled its report "The Torture Archipelago" in an overt attempt to link the Syrian prison system to the notorious Siberian gulags described in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Soviet dissident novel "The Gulag Archipelago."

The system is being run by at least four intelligence agencies collectively referred to as mukhabarat, or secret police, the report says. Those agencies include the Department of Military Intelligence, the Political Security Directorate, the General Intelligence Directorate and the Air Force Intelligence Directorate.

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"The authorities also established numerous temporary unofficial holding centers in places such as stadiums, military bases, schools and hospitals where the authorities rounded up and held people during massive detention campaigns before transporting them to branches of the intelligence agencies," Human Rights Watch reported.