The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said that it had compiled a list of 306 names of people who were arbitrarily detained by the Assad regime in October. It noted that the Assad regime have pursued policies of repression and enforced disappearance since March 2011, which constituted war crimes under international law.
In a new report issued on Monday, the Network said that it recorded 488 cases of arbitrary arrests in October, 87 percent of which were carried out by the Assad regime. It said that the Assad regime detained 306 people, including 18 children and 26 women.
According to the report, the militia of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) detained 118 people, including 8 children and 12 women. The ISIS extremist group detained 11 people, the rights group said. The Network has recorded 6,597 arbitrary arrests in Syria since early 2018.
The Network went on to say that the Assad regime has been detaining civilians since March 2011 without trials or the right to self-defense. The arrests violated the basic rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights such as the right to freedom of speech.
The rights group said that the real number of detainees could be much higher than 140,850 which is the number that the Network was able to record. It noted that many arrests were not reported as families of detainees chose to remain silent for fear of reprisal by the Assad regime or because serving time in prison usually carries a social stigma to female detainees.
The Syrian Coalition earlier said that that the arrest and torture of civilians and depriving them of the right to self-defense is a war crime that is punishable under international human rights law. It called on the international community to give more attention to the issue of detainees; work on saving the remaining detainees; and work on bringing the perpetrators of these crimes to the International Criminal Court. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
