Nabil Hawara was 40 years old when he was finally released from Syria's infamous desert prisons after spending half his life at that point facing constant torture under the Assad family regime.
Nabil Hawara lived in constant fear of death, torture after being locked up as a student
Nabil Hawara spent two decades as a political prisoner in Syrian prisons under the regime of Hafez al-Assad, facing torture every day. Now living in Montreal, he was released in 1995 and applied for asylum in Canada after the Syrian revolution to oust Bashar al-Assad broke out in 2011. (Charles Contant/CBC/Radio-Canada)WARNING: This story includes graphic descriptions of torture.
Nabil Hawara painfully remembers the endless cycle of torture that he endured in one of Syria's most notorious prisons.
For 20 years, from 1975 to 1995, he says he lived in constant fear of death and torment