Al-Hasaka Revolutionary Council held a day of mourning for victims of torture in the prisons of the Assad regime in the Turkish city of Şanliurfa on Sunday. The mourning was held for victims of torture whose names have resurfaced in the “death lists” that the Assad regime has recently been sending to local registration offices across Syria.
Rights groups said that 750 people from the province of Hasaka died under torture in the prisons of the Assad regime along with thousands of other people from the rest of the provinces.
The National Commission on Detainees and Missing Persons sent a letter of condolences to the people participating in the mourning expressing its strong condemnation of the continued crimes by the Assad regime against detainees. The letter stressed that the Commission continued to work to hold all war criminals accountable. “We will not forget why Bashar Assad killed you. We will not forget the sacrifices made by our fallen heroes. We will work day and night so that murderers will not escape justice.”
The Commission pointed out that the Assad regime indicts itself by releasing these lists of names which confirm its complete responsibility for these crimes amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In a similar vein, Syrian activists have launched an urgent appeal to international human rights organizations to support them in their quest to ensure accountability for crimes against detainees who died under torture in the prisons of the Assad regime.
On Saturday, the State of Qatar and the Principality of Liechtenstein delivered a joint letter to the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres about the Assad regime’s recent issuance of thousands of death notices for detainees who died under torture in its prisons. The letter condemned the Assad regime’s systematic violations, torture and execution of detainees.
The letter noted that the Assad regime “violated the right of families of prisoners to know the fate of their relatives and bury them.” It pointed out that “many of the families of the prisoners were avoiding conducting condolence ceremonies when they learned of the death of their relatives for fear of brutality of the Syrian regime.”
Earlier this week, Human Rights Watch called on Assad regime to reveal the real causes of the death of detainees, stressing that “a slip of paper with a date of death is no answer.” (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
