At least 108 people were killed under torture in Syria in the first half of 2017, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said. The victims included 26 people who died under torture in June.
In a periodic report issued on Sunday, the SNHR said that the Assad regime was responsible for the deaths of 95 of people under torture in the reporting period. The SNHR also documented the death of five people under torture by the militia of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), while four more died under torture by groups the SNHR said were untraceable.
According to the report, 15 people were killed under torture in each of the provinces of Aleppo and Deir Ezzor, 14 in Dara’a, 13 in each of Homs and Damascus, 11 in Idlib, 7 in Rural Damascus, 6 in each of Lattakia and Hama, 4 in Hasakah, and 3 in Raqqa.
The report said that the victims included three university students, a media activist, a pharmacist, a nurse, a Red Crescent volunteer, two athletes, three elderlies, a foreigner, and two relatives of people on the regime’s wanted list.
In its annual report published on the occasion of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the SNHR said on Friday that 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 SNHR stressed in its report that the Assad regime and Russian forces “violated the principles of international humanitarian law that protects the right to life.”
The rights group concluded its report by calling on the Security Council and international institutions concerned with human rights issues to shoulder their responsibility towards the “constant killings that do not stop for even one hour.” It also called for pressure on the Assad regime to stop the deliberate shelling of populated areas. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department + Agencies)
