The Action Group for Palestinians of Syria has confirmed that at least 1,800 Palestinian detainees are among the people imprisoned in the Syrian regime’s network of both public and secret prisons, where they are subjected to various types of torture.

A source in the human rights group, run by Palestinians in exile, told SY24 that it has documented the data and names of 1,800 forcibly disappeared Palestinian detainees held in the Assad regime’s prisons, including children, women, the elderly, human rights activists, journalists, doctors, nurses, and relief and humanitarian workers.

He stressed that these detainees are subjected to all forms of torture in the Assad regime’s security branches and in its secret and public detention centers, without the slightest form of health care and in atrocious humanitarian conditions, during which hundreds of these detainees have already died.

In the same context, SY24's source explained that it has so far documented 631 cases of death under torture of Palestinian male and female detainees in the Syrian regime’s prisons.

It is likely that the real number of detainees and victims of torture is far greater than those documented, due to the Syrian regime's concealment of the names and information of the detainees it holds, in addition to the victims' families' fear of announcing the ‘disappearance’ death of their children under torture for fear of further persecution by the Syrian regime of their loved ones and of other family members in order to silence them.

On Monday, coinciding with the International Day of Victims of Enforced Disappearances, which falls on August 30 of each year, the Syrian Network for Human Rights stated in a report that at least 102,287 people, including 2,405 children and 5,801 women, have been subjected to enforced disappearance since March 2011 until August 2021 at the hands of the parties to the conflict and the controlling forces in Syria, including 86,792 in the hands of the Syrian regime forces.

For its part, the National Coalition affirmed in a statement that this is the horrific reality of human rights and the regime’s, its partners’ and others’ ongoing crimes against the Syrian people, including war crimes, enforced disappearances, torture and extrajudicial executions, in addition to the crimes of looting, siege and displacement; in all these and other crimes, the regime is by far the most prolific perpetrator, outdoing the brutality and criminality of all the other parties combined. The coalition asserted that far greater cooperation is required between organizations and the competent authorities, which can open the way towards initiating the role of the international community and mobilizing efforts to rescue and compensate the victims.

The Syrian Coalition called on the international community to refer the head of the Syrian regime, Bashar al-Assad, to the International Criminal Court, saying, “The criminal regime represents a uniquely malicious and chronic case and should be referred to the International Criminal Court.”

Report from: SY24
Original (in Arabic): https://www.sy-24.com/news/%D9%85%D8%B5%D8%AF%D8%B1-%D8%AD%D9%82%D9%88%D...

Artwork by: Najah Albukai, Syrian artist, dissident and former Assad regime prisoner