Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s tribute to the heroic Syrian pilot Ragheed Al-Tatari depicted a lot of touching and expressive implications and meanings, honoring his heroism and courageous position by refusing to bomb the city of Hama, as well as for his steadfastness in the face of arrest and torture for forty-three years in the prisons of the fallen regime.
During the Hafez al-Assad regime, Al-Tatari refused to obey orders to kill the people in Hama by bombing the city and was able to influence his colleagues not to obey those orders, so he was sentenced to imprisonment and torture for 43 years, until the rebels came and released him after the fall of the regime.
Ragheed Al-Tatari is a pilot officer, who likes to be called the “Dean of Syrian Detainees”, and is considered the ” owner of the longest period of political detention” in the prisons of the deposed Assad regime.He was arrested in 1982 and moved between the prisons of the regime for 43 years.
The rebels released him as part of the “deterrence of aggression” operation launched against the Assad regime, and managed to overthrow him on the eighth of October 2024.
Amal Farhat