The Action Group for Palestinians of Syria denounced the war crimes taking place against Palestinian-Syrian detainees in the prisons of the Assad regime, calling for the immediate release of those detainees.
The London-based monitoring group held the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian factions allied with the Assad regime responsible for completely ignoring the issue of detainees even though the detainees include members of these factions.
These remarks came in conjunction with an official visit by a Hamas delegation to the Assad regime. Secretary-General of the Syrian Opposition Coalition’s (SOC), Haytham Rahmeh, denounced the visit as representing “a betrayal to the Arab and Islamic nations, a departure from human principles, and utter disregard for the blood of the Syrian and Palestinian peoples shed by the war criminal Bashar al-Assad.”
“Just as the murderous Assad regime does not represent the Syrian people, Hamas does not represent the position of the brotherly Palestinian people who always demonstrated solidarity with the Syrian people’s quest for freedom. This shameful stance will not affect the deep, friendly relationship between the Syrian and Palestinian peoples,” Rahmeh added.
The Group indicated that it documented the names of 638 Palestinian-Syrian detainees who died under torture in the Assad regime’s prisons since March 2011, including 59 detainees whose bodies were identified through the smuggled photos of torture victims. The figure also includes 34 women who died under torture, and dozens of other Palestinian-Syrian and Syrian detainees who died of brutal torture.
The Group also indicated that the real number of torture victims could be much bigger, especially as the Assad regime continues to withhold information about the fate of more than 2,000 Palestinian-Syrian detainees. It also pointed out that the families of detainees prefer to remain silent about the detention and enforced disappearance of their loved ones for fear of reprisal by the Assad regime.
(Source: SOC’s media department)
