Former detainees in Assad’s prisons have filed a lawsuit against 17 prominent figures linked to the Assad regime, accusing them of torture in prisons and of violating human rights.
Thirteen former detainees filed the lawsuit to the Public Prosecutor General of the Federal Court of Justice in Germany, supported by human rights organizations and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The plaintiffs accused officers in the Syrian army, officials in the National Security Office, and officers in the Syrian Intelligence Services, of torture and violating human rights in Sednaya Prison, near Damascus, and Mazzah Prison in Damascus, according to Amnesty International.
Many Syrian lawyers helped in filing the case, according to Antonie Nord, Director of the Middle East Office of the Heinrich Boll Foundation.
The German independent political foundation supported the lawsuit and urged for international help to stop Assad’s regime violations of human rights in Assad’s prisons.
Wolfgang Kaleck, General Secretary of the aid non-profit legal organization the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) said that torture has been an essential part of the DNA of the Assad regime.
International rights groups have repeatedly accused the Assad regime of committing war crimes against detainees in its prisons. Human Rights Watch spoke about brutal torture of detainees in the prisons of the Assad regime. The Assad regime also built a crematorium inside Sednaya Prison to dispose of bodies of detainees who die under systematic torture.
Detainees in prisons and security branches of the Assad regime are subjected to brutal methods of systematic torture which cause death or chronic diseases, along with deprivation of food, medicine and treatment.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) in early 2017 said it had documented the full names of at least 117,000 detainees in the prisons of the Assad regime since the outbreak of the revolution in March 2011. The Network pointed out that the real number exceeded 215,000. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department + Deutsche Welle)
