The MENA Prison Forum (MPF), the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, medico international, and HAU Hebbel am Ufer are pleased to invite you to the sixth event of the series “Understanding Prison: MENA Prison Forum in Berlin."

The event will take place at 19:00 on 8 December 2025 at HAU Hebbel am Ufer (HAU2) in Berlin.

For tickets, please click here.

19:00 Reading/Performance: “When I Found my Secret Service File in Branch 215…”

Arabic with English translation

Amer Matar, founder and co-director of the Prisons Museum, will read from recently uncovered files, the Syrian secret service (mukhabarat) had written about him. Photos, reports, and objects from Matar's interrogation at Branch 215 will accompany the performance, which will be followed by a Q&A with the audience.

20:00 Panel Discussion: “One Year After the Fall of Assad: Transitional Justice, Memory, and Accountability in Syria”

With Yassin Al-Haj Saleh (Syrian author), Oula Alshaikh Hassan (Women Now for Development), and Anwar Al-Bunni (Syrian Center for Legal Studies and Research)

Moderation by Lea Frehse (Die Zeit) 

English and Arabic, with English and Arabic simultaneous translation

One year after the fall of Bashar al-Assad and the opening of the notorious prisons of the draconian regime of fear, dehumanization, and disappearance, the search for justice, truth, and the fight against impunity remains long and difficult. The ruling interim government, which also includes elements involved in acts of injustice, human rights abuses, and violent jihadi worldviews, struggles with the necessities of daily life, reconstruction, and state institutions. Recurring outbreaks of violence against communities darken the outlook for a new and united Syria. The perpetrators of these acts of violence also remain unaccounted for. Efforts to establish transitional justice, including the right to know the fate of hundreds of thousands of disappeared, seem until today half-hearted and often lack the political will and institutional knowledge to implement such processes.

The panelists will debate questions of justice and impunity, while also addressing the challenges of the past year based on their personal experiences.

Amer Matar is a Syrian journalist and filmmaker based in Berlin. For the past two decades, he has worked with several Arabic newspapers and produced documentary films on human rights violations in Syria. A former detainee in Syria, he founded The Prisons Museum Foundation in 2017, which includes the Syria Prisons Museum and the ISIS Prisons Museum, with international exhibitions to memory and support justice in Syria.

Yassin Al-Haj Saleh is a Syrian writer, intellectual and political activist. He was arrested in 1980 for his membership in a left-wing opposition party and spent 16 years in Syrian prisons. After his release, he devoted himself to writing and became an important voice of the Syrian opposition against the Assad regime. Following the escalation and increasing brutalization of the conflict, he left Syria and has been living in exile since 2013, first in Turkey and later in Berlin, where he continues to publish and regularly contributes to media discussions on the situation in Syria and the situation of Syrians in Germany.

Oula Alshaikh Hassan is a Syrian human rights advocate who works for the Syrian NGO Women Now for Development as regional manager for Damascus and its suburbs, where she leads programs and initiatives empowering women and marginalized communities. In September 2025, Hassan joined the advisory team of the Independent Institution for Missing Persons in Syria, bringing her long-standing expertise and profound personal commitment to the cause of the victims of enforced disappearance.

Anwar Al-Bunni is a Syrian human rights lawyer and the founder of the Syrian Center for Legal Studies and Research (SCLSR) based in Berlin. For over three decades, he has worked to document human rights violations, defend political prisoners, and promote accountability and the rule of law for Syria. After his imprisonment for Human Rights activism, he continued his work in exile, contributing to landmark cases on Syrian war crimes before European courts, including the Koblenz Case. His advocacy focuses on justice, legal reform, and supporting victims of detention and torture in pursuit of a democratic Syria.

The panel will be moderated by Lea Frehse, a Die Zeit journalist and long-standing Middle East correspondent who reports on international justice and security. She has covered Syria throughout the war and travelled the country twice since the fall of the regime. 

The MENA Prison Forum, an initiative of UMAM Documentation and Research (UMAM D&R), is dedicated to researching prison culture in the MENA region. It is an interdisciplinary international network that includes former prisoners, filmmakers, academics, artists, activists, and human rights organizations from various countries around the region. Together with medico international and HAU, the MPF is organizing a series of events in Berlin to promote critical and continual engagement on carceral conditions and dynamics in the MENA region.