Hadi Al-Bahra, President of the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC), underscored the Assad regime’s adoption of detention and forced disappearance as key instruments of war, forming part of a ruthless strategy characterized by terrorism, violence, and enforced disappearance.
During the Detainees’ Week campaign initiated by multiple humanitarian organizations, Al-Bahra criticized the international community’s failure to devise effective mechanisms for accountability, enabling the Assad regime to persist in employing these brutal tactics over the past several years. He expressed dismay at the ongoing suffering of detainees, who remain at the mercy of their captors, awaiting international justice, release, and the prosecution of those responsible for grave violations against them.
Al-Bahra emphasized that the Assad regime’s actions against Syrian detainees, including torture in facilities dubbed “human slaughterhouses,” constitute a blatant disregard for international laws, treaties, and norms prohibiting cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of detainees.
Calling for urgent global intervention, Al-Bahra urged the international community to take decisive steps to rescue detainees and those forcibly disappeared, asserting, “The international community must acknowledge that over 135,000 detainees endure daily torment, anxiously awaiting resolute international action to spare them from death under torture.”
(Source: SOC’s Media Department)
