Description
Mustafa Khalifa is a Syrian writer who studied directing and art in France. He has no political affiliations, and his interests are purely artistic. He spent thirteen years in prison on charges of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, which opposed the regime in the 1980s. He is the author of the novel The Shell.
He was arrested at Damascus airport in the 1980s upon his return from Paris, where he was determined and motivated to participate in building his country and living within it. However, the security services reached out to him because of a report he had inserted into his account. The report mentioned the events of a Parisian evening party, in which Mustafa Khalifa had been intruded into a political discussion to offer his opinion and make a political joke about the late President Hafez al-Assad, who was at the height of his fierce struggle to cling to power in Syria. This report sentenced Mustafa Khalifa, a sensitive man, to thirteen years in prison in one of the world’s harshest prisons. During this time, he endured the most brutal forms of psychological, physical, and sexual torture and abuse because of a report from a colleague in France, and because no security agency cared to consider his case or allowed him to explain his situation or speak to them.
He was released from prison in the late 1990s, only to be shocked by society outside, leaving a small prison for a large one. Upon his release, he was deeply shocked by the death of his parents, who had been waiting for him at the airport thirteen years earlier but had never arrived.
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