The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said it had documented no fewer than 588 cases of arbitrary detention during the month of October, 73% of whom were at the hands of Assad forces.
In a report issued on Monday, the monitoring group said that 5,397 people have been detained in the period between January 1, 2017 and early October of 2017 by the warring parties in Syria.
The rights group also said it had recorded at least 117,000 cases of arbitrary detention since the start of the Syrian revolution in March 2011, noting that 99% of those cases were at the hands of the Assad regime forces.
The Network called for the formation of a special committee to follow up on the issue of enforced disappearance and to press for the revealing the fate of 86,000 missing persons in Syria. It said that regime forces are responsible for 90% of the overall cases of forced disappearance in Syria.
The Network called on the UN Security Council to follow up the implementation of resolutions 2042, 2043 and 2139 which called for an end to enforced disappearance in Syria.
The rights group also called for exerting pressure on all parties to the conflict to disclose the records of detainees; release children and women; and stop taking families and friends as hostages.
Moreover, the Network called upon the official in charge of the detainees in the office of the UN envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura to include the issue of detainees at the upcoming round of Geneva talks. It called for achieving a breakthrough in the case of detainees by revealing the fate of 76,000 people who were forcibly disappeared by the Assad regime. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
