Head of the National Commission on the Defense of Detainees, Yasser Al-Farhan, said that the Assad regime indicted itself by issuing lists of detainees who died under torture in its prisons. He said that these lists represented compelling evidence of the regime’s responsibility for the kidnapping and enforced disappearance of those detainees.
The Assad regime is committing multiple crimes against the dead detainees by burying them in mass graves, hiding their bodies and refusing to hand them over to their families, delaying the issuance of death certificates, and not allowing competent international bodies to conduct medical examinations and investigations.
Farhan added that the town of Daraya, the symbol of the Syrian revolution and civil peace as it faced the regime’s guns with flowers and slogans of unity and tolerance, is the real face of the revolution. The Assad regime wanted to conceal this face from the world by forcibly disappearing symbols and leaders of the peaceful movement then killing them under torture. The regime bears full responsibility for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, he added.
Farhan stressed the need to hold accountable perpetrators of enforced disappearance and arbitrary detention. He called upon the international community to assume its moral responsibility, citing the visit the ambassadors of the major countries made to the town of Daraya to offer condolences to the family of Ghiyath Mattar in 2011. He said that the international community left Mattar’s fellow activists to be tortured to death in the tyrant’s prisons and did nothing to save them.
Farhan pointed out that the Assad regime’s issuance of names of detainees who died under torture without investigating the causes of death and handing over the bodies as well as its preventing people from offering condolences to families of the victims constituted crimes contravening all international and divine laws and ethics. Such behavior exposed the Assad regime’s lack of any moral and human sense.
On behalf of the Syrian Coalition, Farhan offered condolences to families of victims of torture. “Every drop of the blood of our fallen heroes, such as Yahya Sharbaji, Ma’an Sharbaji, Salah Naqshbandi, and thousands of their comrades all across Syria are seeds of the revolution that will once grow as a homage to our fallen heroes. Our fallen heroes will only increase the Syrian people’s determination to achieve their goals of freedom, justice and dignity.” (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department + Agencies)
