Living in Fear

For many Syrian refugees fleeing war and human rights abuses, Europe was meant to be a sanctuary. So it was a shock when they began bumping into their torturers while out shopping or in a cafe. In fact, many of those involved in the Syrian government's notorious interrogation facilities are hiding in plain sight in European cities.


Feras Fayyad (above) misses his home in Syria desperately. He's been living in Berlin for six years now, one of more than 800,000 Syrian refugees in Germany. But he rarely visits Sonnenallee, the predominantly Arab district of his adopted city that's become known as "Little Syria", even though it's full of restaurants and shisha cafes that remind him of home.


"It's a bit scary to walk here for a person who is known as a member of the opposition to the regime," he says during a rare excursion to the area. "This is why I don't come here."


What Feras fears is other Syrians who might still be affiliated with Bashar al-Assad's government and could be acting as the eyes and ears of the state overseas. Back home Feras - an award-winning documentary director whose films describe the systematic bombing of the civilian population by the Syrian military - was arrested and tortured by the state security service.


He eventually managed to escape - but even here in Europe he doesn't feel safe among other expat Syrians.


"It's difficult to know who is [a member of] the intelligence services," he says. "They open stores or they have a business here - and they are still working as spies.


"You don't know when you're going to bump into somebody who was involved in your torture or involved in hurting you inside Syria."


Feras may sound paranoid, but there's a firm basis for his fears. Bill Wiley, who runs the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, an NGO that builds cases against the Syrian government using their own official state documents retrieved from the war zone, agrees that the Syrian diaspora in Europe is a fertile recruiting ground for Syrian spies.


He says some are paid to spy while others do so in exchange for their families' safety back in Syria. "There's various means to recruit people - we know they're doing it and I would be shocked if they weren't doing it," he says.  READ MORE...