His interrogators usually came in the morning. Peeking under a blindfold in a cold concrete cell, Yonas Fikre says he caught only glimpses of their shoes.
They beat the soles of his feet with hoses and sticks, asking him about his Portland, Ore., mosque and its imam. Each day, the men questioning him in a United Arab Emirates prison told the 33-year-old Fikre he would be released "tomorrow," according to an account he gave on Wednesday at a press conference in Sweden, where he has been since September.
"It was very hard, because you don't know why you are in there and the only person you speak to is either yourself, or the wall, or when you go to the restroom or when you go to the torture place," said Fikre, who was held for 106 days. "I have never been that isolated from human beings in my entire life."



The destruction of villages in southern Lebanon was inevitable from the beginning of Israel’s invasion, an...
Eight-year-old Jad Suleiman was walking home from school in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza...
Since the 2024 collapse of the Assad government and the subsequent expansion of Israel’s occupation of...





























