The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said that at least 557 people were arbitrarily detained in Syria in May, of whom 72.9 percent were detained by the Assad regime.
In a new report released on Tuesday, the Network said that the Assad regime detained no fewer than 406 people in various Syrian provinces, mostly in Damascus and its suburbs. In a previous report, the monitoring group said that torture in prisons of the Assad regime has a purely sectarian nature. Human rights activists said that detainees are subjected to brutal methods of torture and are deprived from medical treatment resulting in deaths and chronic diseases.
The Network recorded an increase in the number of raids and arrests in May, adding that many of these arrests took place at around 165 checkpoints scattered across Syria. It noted that the overwhelming majority of these checkpoints belong to the Assad regime.
The figure has brought to 3,415 the number of arrests since the beginning of 2018, the Network added. It said that at least 120,000 people have been detained in Syria since March 2011, 99 percent of whom were detained by Assad regime. However, human rights activists said that the number of people who were detained by the Assad regime exceeds 215,000.
The Network stressed the need to follow up on the issue of detainees and the forcibly disappeared in Syria, calling on the international community to set up a special, neutral committee to investigate the enforced disappearances and reveal the fate of detainees in the custody of the Assad regime.
The report indicated the Assad regime detained young men, university students, and government employees as well as raided public gatherings, public markets and accommodation centers to detain people.
The Network went on to say that the Assad regime has been using arbitrary detention on a daily basis since the beginning of the Syrian revolution in March 2011 with the aim of denying the Syrian people their basic right to freedom of expression without subjecting the detainees to fair trials. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
