Up to 13,000 detainees, including 161 children and 41 women, have died under torture in the prisons of the Assad regime since 2011, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said on Friday.
In its annual report on the occasion of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the SNHR also said that at least 30 detainees, including 13 women and one child, were killed under torture by the ISIS extremist group.
ISIS executes detainees after show trials by torture, field execution, and killing by “innovative, barbaric” ways and without any regard to international law or international humanitarian law. The SNHR said that these acts constitute “war crimes.”
The Network also documented the death of 26 detainees in the detention centers of the militia of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in northern Syria. The victims included a child and two women. The SNHR’s report said that the PYD militia did not adhere to the principles of international law or international humanitarian law.
The rights group noted an increase in the exposure of detainees in the prisons of the Fatah al-Sham Front to torture. It also pointed to rising deaths resulting from torture in detention centers run by the group since mid-2016, with 17 detainees killed under torture as of June 2017.
The Network stressed that torture of detainees in the Assad regime’s detention centers continues unabated in a “systematic, brutal, and sadistic” manner and often carries a sectarian nature. Around 87% of the detainees the rights group said it documented nationwide are held by the Assad regime. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department + Agencies)
