A new rights report indicated that the Assad regime continued to use of violence and brutal torture against detainees in its prisons and detention facilities, causing the death of 41 detainees in September.
In its latest report on victims of torture in the prisons of the Assad regime, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said that the victims included 11 detainees from each of Rural Damascus and Dara’a, four from Hama, two from each of Damascus and Hassakah, three from each of Deir Ezzor, Homs and Raqqa, and one from each of Idlib and Lattakia.
The Network said that the victims included four university students, an athlete, a musician and a child. Human rights reports indicated that the inhumane torture in the prisons of the Assad regime is of purely sectarian nature.
On 27 September, the Assad regime sent 20 death notices of detainees from the town of Khirbet Ghazala to the Civil Registry department in Dara’a province to be registered as dead.
The SNHR earlier said it had complied a list of the names of 118,000 detainees in Syria, 88 percent of whom are held in the Assad regime’s detention facilities. Other human rights organizations gave a much higher estimate, especially as there are tens of thousands of forcibly disappeared persons in Syria.
Exiled Syrian artist, Najah al-Bukai, earlier highlighted through drawing the unspeakable suffering and torture thousands of his countrymen are enduring in the prisons of the Assad regime. He said that he felt like it is his duty to continue the revolution through art.
One of his black-and-white drawings shows a group of half-naked men being beaten up. Another depicts a man bent double, lying on his back with his feet over his head, tied up between two heavy wooden boards.
The Syrian Coalition, meanwhile, said that the Assad regime’s continued murdering of detainees raises fears about the lives of those who remain in its prisons. It underscored that the regime which met peaceful demonstrators with live fire will not hesitate to kill anyone suspected of being an opponent.
The Coalition said that these reports would likely support the efforts of the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) to hold accountable those responsible for war crimes in Syria.
IIIM’s Head Catherine Marchi-Uhel in late September said that her office plans to open at least two cases by year’s end. She described her office as a “quasi-prosecutor” which will be looking to share files with regional and national courts as well as with the International Criminal Court in The Hague. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
