The Action Group for Palestinians of Syria (AGPS) said that the Assad regime’s security agencies detained some of the Syrian and Palestinian survivors of the boat that sank off the city of Tartus on the pretense of security and investigations.
According to the London-based monitoring group, “special sources” confirmed to it that some of the survivors of Syrian and Palestinian nationalities were arrested by the security forces of the Assad regime on the pretense of investigations or for military conscription.
The AGPS quoted a Facebook page named Aleppo Eyewitness as reporting that it had acquired information from inside the Al-Basel Hospital in Tartous, confirming the arrests.
The Consolidated Rescue Group, a non-profit organization which specializes in receiving distress calls from asylum seekers, warned of the grim fate that might be awaiting survivors of the sunken boat off the coast of Tartus.
The Group expressed concerns that the security forces of the Assad regime would arrest the survivors and subject then to torture, especially as most of them are Syrian refugees in Lebanon who preferred to take the perilous sea journey than to return to their country.
Meanwhile, Secretary of the Syrian Opposition Coalition’s (SOC) political committee, Abdul Majeed Barakat, said that arrest and torture has been the Assad regime’s modus operandi since it seized power in Syria. He stressed that the regime cannot change this behavior no matter how flexible it appears before the international community or how many false amnesty decrees it issues that are not worth the ink it was written in.
Barakat stressed that the international community should ensure accountability for those responsible for committing war crimes in Syria. He also warned of giving in to the regime by secretly agreeing with it on plans and programs that will be doomed to fail, stressing that a political transition is the only way to restore stability to Syria and the region, and to ensure international peace and security.
The sunken boat, which carried around 150 refugees, set out from the Lebanese coast on Tuesday towards Europe, and sank off the coast of the city of Tartous.
(Source: SOC’s media department)
