Yasser al-Farhan, member of the Syrian Coalition’s political committee and head of the National Commission on Detainees and Missing Persons, said that the Assad regime’s continued execution of detainees in its prisons causes deep concern about the fate of the remaining detainees. The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said it had documented the death of 198 detainees under torture by the Assad regime in August.
Al-Farhan reiterated the Commission’s calls on friendly countries to form a pressure group and take urgent measures to protect detainees from torture and execution. He also called upon the United Nations and its institutions to exert pressure on the Assad regime and its backers to force it to give access to the International Committee of the Red Cross and independent monitors into secret and public prisons as well as refer detainees to fair courts.
The Network pointed out that the Assad regime forces killed 194 detainees under torture, including two children in August. The victims also included medical, educational staff and media activists as well as 13 people with family ties.
In an earlier report, the monitoring group said that it had compiled a list of the names of 13,000 people who had died under torture in Syria since March 2011, mostly by the Assad regime. The Assad regime has recently admitted it has killed 10,000 detainees in its custody by issuing death notices for the deceased.
Al-Farhan stressed that the Assad regime’s insistence on committing more war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity in its prisons demonstrated utter contempt for the international community, human values, legal rules and international resolutions. The regime is actively seeking to sabotage the political process, Al-Farhan said, adding that all parties should treat Assad as a war criminal and save the Syrian people from the regime’s systematic, atrocious crimes. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
