Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/torture/Syria.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Syria. Some of these links may lead to websites
that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false. No
attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking
for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on
this page and others to see which aspects of Torture by Authorities are of
particular interest to you. You might
be interested in exploring the moral justification for inflicting pain or
inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment in order to obtain critical
information that may save countless lives, or to elicit a confession for a
criminal act, or to punish someone to teach him a lesson outside of the
courtroom. Perhaps your paper might
focus on some of the methods of torture, like fear, extreme temperatures,
starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, suffocation, or immersion in freezing
water. On the other hand, you might
choose to write about the people acting in an official capacity who
perpetrate such cruelty. There is a
lot to the subject of Torture by Authorities.
Scan other countries as well as this one. Draw comparisons between activity in
adjacent countries and/or regions.
Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources
that are available on-line. ***
ARCHIVES *** 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: Syria U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, 30 March 2021 www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/syria/
[accessed 9 August
2021] DISAPPEARANCE There were numerous
reports of forced disappearances by or on behalf of regime authorities, and
the vast majority of those disappeared since the start of the conflict
remained missing. Human rights groups’ estimates of the number of
disappearances since 2011 varied widely, but all estimates pointed to
disappearances as a common practice. The SNHR reported approximately 1,185
forced disappearances during the year ... The regime targeted medical
personnel and critics, including journalists and protesters, as well as their
families and associates. Most disappearances reported by Syrian and
international human rights documentation groups appeared to be politically
motivated, and a number of prominent political prisoners remained missing
(see section 1.e.). TORTURE AND OTHER
CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT Human rights
activists, the COI, and local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), however,
reported thousands of credible cases of regime authorities engaging in
systematic torture, abuse, and mistreatment to punish perceived opponents,
including during interrogations, a systematic regime practice documented
throughout the conflict and even prior to 2011. The European Center for
Constitutional and Human Rights assessed that, while individuals were often
tortured in order to obtain information, the primary purpose of the regime’s
use of torture during interrogations was to terrorize and humiliate
detainees. PRISON AND DETENTION
CENTER CONDITIONS Prison and
detention center conditions remained harsh and in many instances were life
threatening due to food shortages, gross overcrowding, physical and
psychological abuse, and inadequate sanitary conditions and medical care. Freedom House
Country Report 2020 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/syria/freedom-world/2020 [accessed 15 May
2020] F3. IS THERE PROTECTION FROM THE ILLEGITIMATE
USE OF PHYSICAL FORCE AND FREEDOM FROM WAR AND INSURGENCIES? More than 500,000
people have been killed in the civil war since 2011, according to prevailing
estimates. Both the regime and insurgent groups frequently engage in extreme
violence against civilians, including indiscriminate bombardment,
extrajudicial killings, and torture of detainees, with the government being
the greatest abuser. Regime forces have detained and tortured tens of
thousands of people since the uprising began, and many have died in custody,
though detention conditions that amount to enforced disappearance mean the fate
of most detainees is unknown. Syria civil war:
Germany holds unprecedented state torture trial BBC News, 23 April
2020 www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52393402 [accessed 27 April
2020] WHAT ARE THE MEN
ACCUSED OF? -- The
pair allegedly worked for the General Intelligence Directorate (GID), Syria's
most powerful civilian intelligence agency. It has been accused
of playing a key role in the violent suppression of peaceful protests against
Bashar al-Assad's rule that erupted in March 2011. German prosecutors
say that Anwar R, 57, was a high-ranking officer in charge of the GID's Al-Khatib prison in the capital Damascus. He is suspected of
being involved in the torture of at least 4,000 people in 2011-12, and has
been charged with 58 counts of murder as well as rape and sexual assault. Eyad A, 43, is said to
have worked for Anwar R's department and has been charged with torture in at
least 30 cases. Syria Torture
Survivors Seek Justice Deborah Amos, Jacobia Dahm, Axel Öberg, Alex Leff, Hannah Bloch,
Larry Kaplow, Michael May, Emily Bogle, Claire Harbage, Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma,
Columbia Journalism School, 8 April 2020 dartcenter.org/resources/syria-torture-survivors-seek-justice [accessed 12 April
2020] Omar Alshogre can remember every detail of his torture in
Syrian jails: the electric shocks, the brutal beatings, the rancid food and
open wounds, the days he was suspended by his wrists from the ceiling for
hours, then returned to a crammed cell where sleep
was only possible in shifts. Sometimes the
torture consisted of forcing him to listen. "They put us in the corridor
just to hear the torture, and this guy is saying, 'Please kill me. I can tell
you whatever you want. Stop or kill me,' " he
recalls. Artist Copes by
Drawing His Syrian Torture Nisan Ahmado, Extremism Watch, Voice of America VOA News, 7
November 2018 [accessed 11 November
2018] Al-Bukai says he was tortured physically and
psychologically. He was electrocuted, brutally beaten, starved and hanged for
hours from his hands. He says he also
witnessed the torture of other detainees, with some tortured by what he termed
“the German chair” technique, in which prison guards broke the backs of
detainees, paralyzing them. DEAD BODIES -- Among all the
horrific memories, al-Bukai says one image stands
out. It is the memory of detainees carrying the bodies of those who died
under torture. The image is reflected in many of his drawings as well. “Everyday evening
around 8 p.m., a truck full of dead bodies arrived to branch 227 from other
detention centers. The security officers would order a number of detainees to
go out and empty the truck. We used to go out in our underwear with a green
wool military blanket to carry the dead,” al-Bukai
said. Al-Bukai added that the bodies were kept in the basement of
their branch for the night and in the morning those who died under torture
from their branch would be put with them and taken away by a truck. Syrian
detainee No. 72's tales of torture Anchal Vohra, Deutsche Welle DW, Bekaa Valley,
Lebanon, 14 August 2018 www.dw.com/en/syrian-detainee-no-72s-tales-of-torture/a-44998055 PERMALINK - p.dw.com/p/32o35 [accessed 14 August
2018] A DAY IN THE LIFE OF
PRISONER No. 72
- There was a routine to life in Assad's most infamous torture chambers.
Meals were interspersed with thrashings, euphemistically termed
interrogations. Hanging by the wrists
for hours, contorting bodies to fit in a tire, countless lashes with a pipe:
These were the most commonly used techniques. A PERPETUAL
NIGHTMARE
- They escorted him to Saydnaya prison, one of
General Hassan's detention centers, the first stop on what would be a long
and excruciating ordeal. Recounting the tortures ordered by General Hassan,
he said: "They electrocuted me three times a day. Once my toenail popped
out with the impact." Syrian
women tortured and humiliated in Assad regime prisons Julia Hahn, Deutsche
Welle, 1 May 2018 [accessed 1 May
2018] Muna Muhammad remembers
every tiny detail. The stench in the cells, the pain, her torturers. "He
pulled a black plastic bag over my head and then he hung me from the ceiling,
head down," the 30-year-old says. The memory still haunts her. The guard
said he was going to leave her hanging from the ceiling until all her
"evil thoughts land in this bag," One day, her
torturer showed up with a stun gun. "He said, 'Muna,
where is your heart?" she recalls. "I pointed at my heart, and
that's where he zapped me." For months, Muna was locked up in solitary confinement or packed
together with other inmates. "One day they interrogated a
16-year-old," Muna says. "I heard her
scream, it was so loud, I thought they must be
killing her." Many women were
sexually abused, Muna says, adding that she also faced
the threat of rape if she didn't confess. There
is as much evidence against Assad as there was against the Nazis Kyle Orton, TRT
World, 29 April 2018 [accessed 29 April
2018] One of the best
descriptions of Syria’s pre-war jails comes from Mustafa Khalifa,
who spent twelve years inside one. In 2008, Khalifa
wrote about his experience in novelised form in a
book called The Shell. Khalifa describes being
arrested without any explanation to him of the charges and without any
explanation to his family of where he was. On arrival at Assad’s
prisons Khalifa describes a “welcoming party”—a
beating—that some detainees do not survive. The cells are overcrowded and
squalid. Access to water and basic hygiene needs is severely restricted. Food
is minimal and sometimes withheld altogether. When food is served it is
dumped on the floor and prisoners whipped as they try to retrieve it; if they
stumble they might be beaten to death. When prisoners are
allowed into the yard, they are assaulted and forced to assault each other,
sometimes sexually. All of this is accompanied by verbal degradation at all
opportunities. The humiliation and dehumanisation
is total, reinforcing to prisoners how cheaply the authorities view life and
how close death is at all times. Syrian
torture survivors speak out newstimes www.newstimes.com/news/media/Syrian-torture-survivors-speak-out-1152398.php [accessed 23
December 2017] My wrists were
bound together with iron chains,” said the man who calls himself Abu Firas. “They put me onto an iron bar under the ceiling so
that my feet were two centimetres above the floor.”
“They hung me on my hands from the ceiling,” Abdul Karim Rihawi
told Euronews.“They beat
me with an iron stick.” “My finger felt like it was the size of a football,”
said Yazan Awad. “I felt
my arms were very long because my shoulders became dislocated (by this
torture). I looked and saw my arms far away. They had an
electric instrument and they put electric cables under my toes, under my arms
and on my thumbs,” Abu Firas described. “You still
can see traces from that procedure on my thumbs. Then they turned the current
on and off, on and off, again and again. They tortured me
with the car-tyre method, squeezing my body with
bent arms into the tyre up to the knees so I could
not move,” he alleges. “They hit me with a piece from a tank engine, a kind
of a V-belt… After the first two blows, my body felt paralysed 'It
was hell': Syrian refugees share stories of torture Priyanka Gupta, Al
Jazeera, 25 June 2016 www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/06/hell-syrian-refugees-share-stories-torture-160620094137004.html [accessed 3 August
2016] Yehia, 29, Deraa -- 'The
screams of the women were unbearable' "It was five in
the morning. Dozens of policemen came and surrounded our neighbourhood.
I was asleep at the time. Someone removed the blanket from my face and
dragged me and my two brothers out of the house and bundled us into a car. I was taken to what
looked like a military basement. Sixty-five people were put in one room.
First I was there with my three brothers. Twenty-four hours went by and we
were given no food or water. We weren't even allowed to go to the bathroom.
For 16 hours the men would come and ask us questions. The investigators would
come at 4pm and interrogate us until 12pm the next day. I was blindfolded
and my hands and feet were tied. Sometimes they would use electric cables and
give us electric shocks. They would beat us with iron rods after pouring water
on our bodies so that it hurts more. They would keep beating us for four to
six hours. They hit me on my neck and on my back. One officer jammed a rod in
my knee so hard that it's left a permanent injury in my leg. 60,000
'tortured to death in Syrian jails' Australian
Associated Press AAP, 22 May 2016 www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/60000-tortured-to-death-in-syrian-jails/news-story/bd5e98377e91e0121264f22363d68984 [accessed 9 August
2016] www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/05/tens-thousands-die-syria-government-prisons-160521173306410.html [accessed 7 August
2017] The pro-opposition
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Saturday reported that the figure of
60,000 deaths came from reliable sources, primarily in the air force
intelligence and state security agencies and at the notorious Sednaya prison near Damascus. The victims died as
a direct result of torture or due to a lack of food and medicine inside the
detention facilities, the UK-based monitoring group said. The observatory
said that using other sources, it had itself documented the deaths of 14,456
detainees, including 110 children under the age of 18. Hands
clamped to their mouths and faces strained in anguish: New Yorkers confronted
by harrowing photos of Syrian torture victims Julian Robinson,
Daily Mail, 10 March 2015 www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2988670/Graphic-torture-photos-Syria-display-United-Nations.html [accessed 27 March
2015] Horrified New
Yorkers witnessed the grim reality of life in Syria as they viewed graphic
photographs smuggled out of the war-torn country. An exhibition of gruesome
torture images showing eye gougings, strangulation
and the effects of long-term starvation, is being staged at the city's United
Nations headquarters. About 25 pictures
from a collection of 55,000 are on display this week, in an initiative
sponsored by the US, Britain, France, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, as the conflict
in Syria moves into its fifth year. Some were visibly
distressed as they viewed the horrific pictures, which were smuggled out of
Syria between 2011 and mid-2013. Former war crimes
prosecutors have described the images as 'clear evidence' of systematic
torture and mass killings in Syria's three-year-long civil war. Nearly
13,000 killed by regime torture in Syria war Agence France-Presse AFP, Beirut, 13 March 2015 news.yahoo.com/nearly-13-000-syrians-killed-regime-torture-since-132306632.html [accessed 27 March
2015] Nearly 13,000 Syrians,
including 108 children, have been tortured to death in regime prisons since
the uprising began in March 2011, a monitoring group said Friday. He told AFP the
toll did not include more than 20,000 detainees who have
"disappeared" in government prisons and whose fate remains unknown. According to a 2013
Human Rights Watch report, Syrian security officials beat prisoners with
batons and metal rods as they hung from the ceiling by their wrists. A report issued by
21 international aid organisations on Thursday said
rape and sexual abuse were also used in regime detention centres
as a "method of war." Human
Rights Watch World Report 2015 - Events of 2014 Human Rights Watch,
29 January 2015 www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/...
or
www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/wr2015_web.pdf [accessed 18 March
2015] SYRIA ARBITRARY ARRESTS,
ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCES, TORTURE, AND DEATHS IN CUSTODY - Syrian security
forces continue to detain people arbitrarily, regularly subjecting them to
ill-treatment and torture, and often disappearing them using an extensive
network of detention facilities throughout Syria. Many detainees were young
men in their 20s or 30s; but children, women, and elderly people were also detained.
In some instances, individuals reported that security forces detained their
family members, including children, to pressure them to turn themselves in.
On August 30, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a local monitoring group,
estimated that 85,000 people were currently being held by the government in
conditions that amount to enforced disappearance. Released detainees
consistently report ill-treatment and torture in detention facilities and
prison conditions that lead to many cases of deaths in custody. Four former
detainees released from the Sednaya military prison
in 2014 described deaths in custody and harsh prison conditions that closely
match the allegations of mass deaths in custody by a military defector made
in January, who photographed thousands of dead bodies in military hospitals
in Damascus. At least 2,197 detainees died in custody in 2014, according to
local activists. ISIS using barbaric
device to torture breastfeeding mothers Chris Perez, New
York Post, 30 December 2014 [accessed 30
December 2014] The 24-year-old new
mom, referred to as Batol to conceal her identity,
was walking through the city of Raqqa when she was snatched up by the Islamic
State’s all-female police squad — the notorious al-Khansa
brigade, the Daily Mail reports. “They brought a
sharp object that has a lot of teeth and held me, placing it on my chest and
pressing it strongly,” she said. “I screamed from pain and I was badly
injured. They later took me to the hospital.” The al-Khansa brigade has become infamous for its savagery in
recent months after countless British women who joined the ISIS insurgency
began boasting about their membership on social media. The group bragged about
handing out merciless beatings, severe lashings, managing sex slaves and
ordering executions, according to the Daily Mail. Even though Batol’s claims could not be verified, the account matches
stories that other people have told about the al-Khansa
extremists’ behavior. Female Isis
fanatics clamped torture spikes on woman's breast for feeding baby in public Jeremy Armstrong,
Daily Mirror, 29 December 2014 www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/female-isis-fanatics-clamped-torture-4890583 [accessed 30
December 2014] A man also told
resistance movement website ‘Raqqa is being Slaughtered Silently’ that he was
flogged for smoking, now banned by IS laws. Sami, 25, revealed:
“They arrested me on charges of smoking and they took me to their
headquarters and then put me to the torture chamber. “The room floor was
full of blood and then they flogged me 40 times and threw me in a cell. There
were a lot of detainees, when I looked at them I saw death in their eyes and
their situation was pitiful. “During the three
nights I spent at the headquarters, I heard the screams of women and men who IS were torturing. To hear the screams of the
people of my city when they are being tortured at the hands of strangers is a
torture of another type, which has destroyed my dignity.” Syrian Defector:
Assad Poised to Torture and Murder 150,000 More Josh Rogin, The Daily Beast, 31 July 2014 [accessed 1 August
2014] According to a senior
State Department official, his department initially asked to keep this
hearing -- in which Caesar displayed new photos from his trove of 55,000
images showing the torture, starvation, and death of over 11,000 civilians --
closed to the public, out of concerns for the safety of the defector and his
family. Caesar smuggled the pictures out of Syria when he fled last year in
fear for his life. Caesar’s trip had been in the works for months. Caesar told the
committee members his story. After spending two years meticulously
documenting the systematic torture and murder of thousands of men, women, and
children, he carefully planned his escape with the photos and the files that
accompany them. The FBI is near complete in its effort to verify them,
increasing their evidentiary value for future war crimes prosecutions. Syrian rebel
fighter recalls torture inside ISIS prison Brenda Stoter, Al-Monitor, Gaziantep Turkey, 4 March 2014 www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/03/syria-aleppo-bab-gaziantep-isis-torture-amnesty.html [accessed 26 March
2014] SUMMARY - A young Syrian
rebel fighter recounts the horrific experience of spending more than three
months imprisoned by the radical Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). Guards didn’t talk
to him for the first two days in prison, but when the
"investigation" started on the third day of his capture, masked
militants began beating him. Torture methods included electricity shocks and
hanging him upside down from the ceiling. The cries and screams of other
inmates were constant, but he doesn’t know exactly how many people were
detained, as he was put in a separate cell with only one other person. There
was no electricity, only a small window without bars. “I shared a cell
with an Alawite officer. They were beating him so severely that the whole
cell was covered in blood," Mohammed said. He had been forced to watch. He added that he
was forced to sleep in his cellmate's blood, who told him that he hadn’t seen
his three children for more than two years. “Outside the prison
I would probably hate him like I hate Bashar, but inside the cell we
supported each other. God bless him." Two days later, the
Alawite prisoner died from his wounds. He had bruises all over his body after
severe and repeated beatings. The next morning, guards removed the corpse,
but Mohammed said that dead bodies usually weren’t removed from prison
immediately. Syria jihadists
torturing, killing detainees: Amnesty Agence France-Presse AFP, 19 December 2013 zeenews.india.com/news/world/syria-jihadists-torturing-killing-detainees-amnesty_897858.html [accessed 19 Dec
2013] The rights group
said detainees held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)
include children as young as eight and that minors have been sentenced to
severe floggings and held with adults in "cruel and inhuman
conditions". It described
individuals being seized by masked men, held for weeks on end in solitary
confinement at unknown locations and tried by self-styled Islamic sharia
courts that mete out death or floggings with little if any due process. Former detainees
described being beaten with rubber generator belts or cables, tortured with
electric shocks and being forced into a painful stress position known as the
"scorpion" in which the detainee's wrists are bound over one
shoulder. "After years
in which they were prey to the brutality of (President Bashar al-Assad's)
regime, the people of Raqa and Aleppo are now
suffering under a new form of tyranny imposed on them by (ISIL), in which
arbitrary detention, torture and executions have become the order of the
day," said Philip Luther, Amnesty's director for the Middle East and
North Africa." One horrific tale
of torture from Syria Dimitar Dimitrov,
Стандарт
нюз, Standard News Corp, 27
November 2013 www.standartnews.com/english/read/one_horrific_tale_of_torture_from_syria-1692.html [accessed 28 Nov
2013] On 9 July 2013, Mohammed
was detained by members of the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant (ISIS), an al-Qaeda affiliate, along with six other members of the
council in the border town of Tal Abyad. Mohammed was tortured on a daily basis by
the jihadists over the next month.
"I was handcuffed, blindfolded when I was taken to their base.
Like the six other detainees with me, we were whipped 70 times every
day." Mohammed recalls
how two brothers were detained by ISIS fighters in Raqqa and then killed - one
was tortured to death; the other shot in the head - simply because they were
members of President Assad's minority Alawite sect. Mohammed also tells about a heating oil
merchant, Abu Wael, who was tortured because he
refused to sell to members of ISIS at a discount. One night, he was detained and then
tortured for six consecutive days.
"His shirt was so embedded in his flesh [from the flogging] that
I had to push my finger deep into the wounds to pull out the material,"
Mohammed says. "We managed to
convince them later to transfer the remainder of his punishment to us, and we
received 70 lashes a day to save him from more torture." Why young Syrian
refugees will haunt the Mideast for decades to come Mark Mackinnon, Zaatari Refugee Camp, Jordan, The Globe and Mail, 14
September 2013 [accessed 14 Sept
2013] The cruel,
pointless torture of young Halim Mahameed went on
for two days.“The security
forces took me and beat me. … They tied my whole body up and they whipped me
with electric cables,” the diminutive young Syrian says matter-of-factly. “Why?” is the only response I can muster in
the silence that follows. The 14-year-old smiles sadly before continuing. “I had gone to some
demonstrations and, when people were killed and injured, I helped with the
ambulances. Someone from the security forces saw me and put me on a list.” Torture evidence
found in Syrian prisons The Associated Press
AP, Beirut, 17 May 2013 [accessed 26 March
2014] Rights activists
have found torture devices and other evidence of abuse in government prisons
in the first Syrian city to come under the control of the opposition, Human
Rights Watch said in a report Friday. The HRW said its
researchers found physical evidence that Syrians were tortured, including
with a device which former detainees said was used to stretch or bend
victims' arms and legs. Four former
detainees said that officers and guards in the facility tortured them, HRW
said. Ahmed said he and
his brother had been beaten and tortured with electricity shocks for several
hours a day throughout five days of detention. He told HRW that intelligence
officers and prison guards wanted him to give up the names of other
protesters. "The torture started
in turns between my brother and me," Ahmed said. "They started
torturing him with electricity for three, four hours, and then they threw him
in a solitary cell. They wanted me to tell them who used to go out to
demonstrate with me . and
they would make me hear my brother's screams." The interrogators also threatened to
detain his mother. Ahmed told HRW that the possibility of his mother being
harmed made him confess to anything.
"Whatever it is you want, I am with you," he said he had
told the interrogators. "I will fingerprint a white piece of paper, and
you write what you want." In one method of
torture the HRW report details, the victim is tied to a flat board, sometimes
in the shape of a cross. In some cases guards stretched or pulled their limbs
or folded the board in half so that their face touched their legs, causing
pain.” Secret prison
likely site of torture, killings Lauren Williams, The
Daily Star, Beirut, 15 April 2013 www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2013/Apr-15/213719-secret-prison-likely-site-of-torture-killings.ashx#axzz2c391epRM [accessed 15
Aug 2013] www.dailystar.com.lb/GetArticleBody.aspx?id=213719&fromgoogle=1 [accessed 3 January
2018] “We walked down in
a northerly direction, coming down three steps, and then we walked further
until we arrived at another one, that got us to an underground dungeon.” “Beatings started
the moment we arrived ... with batons, electrocution sticks and cables, they
also used their hands and legs, kicking us all over our bodies, not to
mention of course that all of that was accompanied by a torrent of insults
and cursing.” Another former
detainee, Kamal, a student from the Damascus suburbs, said he was also bound,
blindfolded and beaten. “We were taken
handcuffed with long chains that bound me [to the] other detainees so to make
movement impossible,’ Kamal said. “As we walked further we could hear the
screams of other detainees who were clearly suffering from torture, their
voices kept getting louder as we walked further in.” Torture centres in Syria [video] VancouverSunOnline [Stuart Greer reports], 13 April 2013 www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAFt5EMUa3U [accessed 15
Aug 2013] [video] Human Rights Watch
says Syrian security forces are running torture centres
for anyone who opposes the regime. Hell Holes:
Torture, starvation and murder the norm at world’s worst gulags Perry Chiaramonte, Fox News, 1 March 2013 [accessed 2 March
2013] TADMOR PRISON, SYRIA - Sarraj, now an immunologist at Northwestern School of
Medicine in Chicago, has a chillingly lyrical name for the prison where he
spent nearly a decade: “Symphony of Fear.” The prison was shut
down in 2001 but was re-opened in June 2011. Guards at Tadmor
are given free reign in handling prisoners and
often dole out beatings, torture, hangings, and even chop off body parts of
anyone considered a traitor. 12 Syrian
detainees killed under torture News Agencies,
Beirut, 1 March 2013 www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentid=20130301154995 [accessed 1 March
2013] now.mmedia.me/lb/en/Now-Syria/12-syrian-detainees-killed-under-torture [accessed 30 August
2016] www.hurriyetdailynews.com/12-syrian-detainees-killed-under-torture-ngo--42029 [accessed 3 January
2018] Twelve civilians,
including four members of one family, from the same Damascus district were
killed under torture in prison after their arrest, the Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights reported Thursday. Families received
the identity cards of the victims from the security forces on Wednesday
night, according to the Britain-based watchdog. The men were all
from Nahr Aisha district in the embattled south of
the capital, which has seen regular raids and arrests by government troops
that have resulted in the imprisonment, torture and killing of other
residents, it said. The Local Coordination Committees, a network of
opposition activists on the ground, also reported the deaths and identified
the men by name. The Observatory,
which collects reports from a wide network of activists, rights lawyers and
medics in civilian and military hospitals, has documented hundreds of cases
in which detainees have been tortured to death and many others in which
torture led to permanent disability. It estimates that "tens of
thousands" of Syrians are being held in prisons throughout the country. "There is no
exact number of detainees because we don’t know what happens after their
arrest. Over 200,000 people have been taken prisoner, but we don’t know how
many were killed," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahmansaid. Oakville MD risks
murder, torture to treat wounded in Syria Hamida Ghafour,
TORONTO STAR, 28 Jan 2013 www.insidehalton.com/news/article/1572138--oakville-md-risks-murder-torture-to-treat-wounded-in-syria [accessed 29 January
2013] [accessed 7 August
2017] Dr. Anas al Kassem knows he is a
marked man. A friend’s wife phoned him recently from Damascus to warn that
his life was in danger. The friend, a psychologist, had been kidnapped by
Syrian security and tortured for three months. When he broke he gave al Kassem’s name to his interrogators. Al Kassem, 39,
is a trauma surgeon and part of a secret network of dozens of doctors working
in 50 underground clinics run mostly out of private homes across Aleppo and Idlib provinces in the northwest which treat civilians
and fighters wounded in the civil war. An increasing
number of Syrian doctors are being killed or tortured as the war grinds on
between President Bashar al-Assad — who was once an ophthalmologist in
England — and rebels seeking to overthrow his regime. Physicians for Human
Rights, an American advocacy group, published a report saying that during the
first seven months of the conflict 250 doctors were arrested and interrogated
for treating injured protesters. Others say the figure is higher. At least
800 medical workers have been detained, tortured or killed since the uprising
began, said Sahloul. Conclusions and
recommendations of the Committee against Torture U.N. Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment -- Doc. CAT/C/SYR/CO/1/Add.2
(2012) www1.umn.edu/humanrts/cat/observations/syria2012.html [accessed 8 March
2013] C. Principal
subject of concerns 18. The Committee
is deeply concerned at consistent, credible, documented and corroborated
allegations about the existence of widespread and systematic violations of
the provisions of the Convention against the civilian population of the
Syrian Arab Republic committed by the authorities of the State party and by
militias (e.g. shabiha) acting at the instigation
or with the consent or the acquiescence of the authorities of the State
party. 19. The Committee
takes into account the finding of the International Commission of Inquiry on the
Syrian Arab Republic that “a reliable body of evidence exists that ...
provides reasonable grounds to believe that particular individuals, including
commanding officers and officials at the highest levels of Government, bear
responsibility for crimes against humanity and other gross human rights
violations” (A/HRC/19/69, para. 87). It also takes note of the statement of
the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights of 27 May 2012,
according to which, “indiscriminate and possibly deliberate killing of
villagers in the El Houleh area of Homs in Syria
may amount to crimes against humanity or other forms of international
crime”.1 20. The Committee
expresses its grave concern about the prevalence, continuation and
un-rebutted occurrence of violations of the Convention in the State party, as
documented in the above-mentioned reports: (a) Widespread use
of torture and cruel and inhuman treatment of detainees, individuals
suspected of having participated in demonstrations, journalists, web
bloggers, defectors of security forces, persons wounded or injured, women and
children (arts. 2, 11, 13 and 16); (b) The habitual
use of torture and cruel and inhuman treatment as a tool, which appears to be
deliberate and part of State’s policy, to instil fear and to intimidate and
terrorize civilian population (arts. 2 and 16) and the complete disregard by
State party authorities of the requests from authoritative international
bodies and experts to cease these violations (art. 2); (g) The reported
existence of secret places of detention; as well as reports on the lack of
access to places of detention by international and national monitors and
organizations; such secret detention centres are
per se breaches of the Convention and lead inevitably to cases of torture and
ill-treatment contrary to the Convention (arts. 2, 11, 12, 13 and 16); (s) Continued
granting of immunity from prosecution for members of the security forces
which promotes a long-standing culture of abuse and impunity, as evidenced by
the fact that Legislative Decree No. 14, of January 1969, and Decree No. 69,
of September 2008, are still in force (arts. 12 and 13). Torture
Archipelago Human Rights Watch,
July 3, 2012 -- ISBN: 1-56432-906-2 www.hrw.org/reports/2012/07/03/torture-archipelago-0 [accessed 29 January
2013] Arbitrary Arrests,
Torture, and Enforced Disappearances in Syria’s Underground Prisons since
March 2011 This report is
based on more than 200 interviews conducted by Human Rights Watch since the
beginning of anti-government demonstrations in Syria in March 2011. The
report includes maps locating the detention facilities, video accounts from
former detainees, and sketches of torture techniques described by numerous
people who witnessed or experienced torture in these facilities. AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL From an old article -- URL not available Article was
published sometime prior to 2015 TORTURE AND OTHER
ILL-TREATMENT Torture and other
ill-treatment of detainees, including children, were
widespread and committed with impunity by government forces and associated
militias seeking to extract information or “confessions” and to terrorize or
punish suspected government opponents. Methods included severe beatings,
suspension by the limbs, being suspended in a tyre,
electric shocks and rape and other sexual abuse. Detainees were often held in
very cramped, insanitary conditions and denied medical treatment or even
abused by medical staff. Salameh Kaileh, a Palestinian journalist with Jordanian nationality,
was tortured by Air Force Intelligence officers after being arrested at his
home in Damascus on 24 April, apparently because of a Facebook conversation
and his possession of a left-wing publication. He was whipped on the soles of
his feet and insulted. On 3 May he was moved to a military hospital, where he
and others were beaten, insulted and denied access to toilets and medication.
He was deported to Jordan on 14 May. ENFORCED
DISAPPEARANCES Government forces
withheld information on the fate of hundreds, possibly thousands, of
detainees held in connection with the conflict in conditions that amounted to
enforced disappearance. The authorities also continued their failure to
account for some 17,000 people who disappeared in Syrian custody since the
late 1970s. They included hundreds of Palestinians and Lebanese nationals who
were arrested in Syria or abducted from Lebanon by Syrian forces or by
Lebanese and Palestinian militias. However, the release of Lebanese national Yacoub Chamoun almost 27 years
after he went missing reinforced hopes among some families that their loved
ones may still be alive. Activist Zilal Ibrahim al-Salhani
disappeared after security forces arrested her at her home in Aleppo on 28
July. Her fate was still unknown at the end of the year. ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Freedom House
Country Report - Political Rights: 7 Civil Liberties: 6 Status: Not Free 2009 Edition www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2009/syria [accessed 29 January
2013] LONG
URL ç 2009 Country Reports begin on Page 21 [accessed 13 May
2020] While the lower
courts operate with some independence and generally safeguard defendants’
rights, politically sensitive cases are usually tried by the Supreme State
Security Court (SSSC), an exceptional tribunal established under emergency
law that denies the right to appeal, limits access to legal counsel, tries
many cases behind closed doors, and routinely accepts confessions obtained
through torture. SSSC judges are appointed by the executive branch, and only
the president and interior minister may alter verdicts. Human Rights Reports
» 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, March 8, 2006 www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61699.htm [accessed 29 January
2013] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61699.htm [accessed 7 July
2019] TORTURE
AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – The law prohibits
such practices, and the penal code provides punishment for abusers. Under
article 28 of the constitution, "no one may be tortured physically or
mentally or treated in a humiliating manner." However, security forces
continued to use torture frequently. During the year
local human rights organizations cited numerous cases of security forces
torturing prisoners, including the case of 200 Kurds on trial in a Damascus
military court for their involvement in the March 2004 riots in Qamishli. During the proceedings, a number of detainees
complained of torture and displayed their injuries to the judge. Torture of
political detainees also was common. The Paris-based
International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) reported that a French man of
Lebanese origin was detained on September 5 at the Syrian-Lebanese border by
Syrian authorities and was later transferred to Detention Center 235
(Palestinian Branch). The man, identified in press articles as Charles F.,
was held for 10 days, during which he was reportedly beaten with electrical
cables, kicked, and forced to watch other prisoners being tortured. On
December 15, he filed a complaint against Syrian authorities in a Parisian
court. Multiple human
rights organizations reported that Seraj Khalbous, an Islamist, was tortured for approximately one
month following his September 12 detention, resulting in several weeks of
hospitalization and partial paralysis. According to a
December 14 AI report, security forces tortured foreign national Yasin Taha, and forced him to
"confess" to being a leading member of al-Qa'ida
after his 2003 arrest. The reasons for his arrest were unknown. AI later
reported that he was turned over to Tunisian authorities in December. Family members of
45 accused Islamists from the villages of Qatana,
al-Otaiba, and al-Tal reported to human rights
organizations during the year that their relatives had been tortured at the
time of their arrests in 2004. In April 2004 five
Kurdish students detained by the police were reportedly beaten and subjected
to electric shocks for three days (see section 5). AI reported the case of
four young men arrested in 2003 in Daraa and held
in Saidnaya prison, where they were subjected to
various forms of torture and ill-treatment, including having their fingers
crushed, beatings to the face and legs, dousing with cold water, standing for
long periods of time during the night, subjected to loud screams and beatings
of other detainees, stripped naked in front of others, and not being allowed
to pray and grow a beard. Former prisoners,
detainees, and reputable local human rights groups, reported that torture
methods included electrical shocks; pulling out fingernails; burning
genitalia; forcing objects into the rectum; beating, sometimes while the
victim was suspended from the ceiling; alternately dousing victims with
freezing water and beating them in extremely cold rooms; hyperextending the
spine; bending the detainees into the frame of a wheel and whipping exposed
body parts; and using a backward-bending chair to asphyxiate the victim or
fracture the victim's spine. Torture was most likely to occur while detainees
were held at one of the many detention centers operated by the various
security services throughout the country, particularly while authorities
attempted to extract a confession or information. Past victims of
torture have identified the officials who tortured them, up to the level of
brigadier general. In past years, when allegations of excessive force or
physical abuse were made in court, the plaintiff was required to initiate a
separate civil suit against the alleged abuser for damages. However, no
action was taken against the accused. There were no confirmed cases of new
allegations during the year. In December a French citizen filed a complaint
with French courts, claiming to have been tortured during his September
detention in Syria (see section 1.c.). Courts did not order medical
examinations for defendants who claimed that they were tortured (see section
1.e.). August 2004 marked
the government's accession to the UN Convention Against Torture, but the
government's objection to article 20 prevents outside observers from coming
to the country to investigate allegations of torture within the country. Police beat and
mistreated detainees during the year. On March 11, Safwat
Abdullah died following a police beating in Lattakia
(see section 1.a.). On November 12, human rights activist Dr. Kamal al-Labwani reported to other human rights observers that he
had been struck four times by a security official while in political security
custody and had not been given food for four days. Authorities at Damascus
International Airport detained Dr. al-Labwani on
November 8 following a three month-long trip abroad (see section 1.d.) that
included a visit to Washington. All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this
webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, "Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance
& Other Ill Treatment in the early years of the 21st Century-
Syria", http://gvnet.com/torture/Syria.htm, [accessed <date>] |
