Torture in Syrian Jails

Amnesty International on the surge of deaths in detention in Syria:

The 88 deaths represented a significant escalation in the number of deaths following arrest in Syria. In recent years Amnesty International has typically recorded around five deaths in custody per year in Syria.

“These deaths behind bars are reaching massive proportions, and appear to be an extension of the same brutal disdain for life that we are seeing daily on the streets of Syria,” said Neil Sammonds, Amnesty International’s researcher on Syria.

“The accounts of torture we have received are horrific. We believe the Syrian government to be systematically persecuting its own people on a vast scale.”

The victims recorded in the report were all swept up in arrests after Syrians took to the streets en masse from March this year. All male, the victims include 10 children, some as young as 13.

All the victims are believed to have been detained because they were involved, or suspected of being involved, in the pro-reform protests.

In at least 52 of these cases there is evidence that torture or other ill-treatment caused or contributed to the deaths.

Amnesty International has seen video clips of 45 of the cases – taken by relatives, activists or other individuals – and has asked independent forensic pathologists to review a number of these.

Injuries on many of the victims’ corpses indicate that they may have suffered horrendous beatings and other abuses. Signs indicating torture include burns, blunt force injuries, whipping marks and slashes....

Thirteen-year-old Hamza Ali al-Khateeb disappeared on 29 April during protests against the siege of Dera’a, and was later found dead with apparent blunt force injuries and a severed penis.

One video clip seen by Amnesty International shows the body of Tariq Ziad Abd al-Qadr from Homs, which was returned to his family on 16 June. His injuries included pulled-out hair, marks to the neck and penis possibly caused by electric shocks, an apparent cigarette burn, whipping marks, stab wounds and burns.

The body of Dr Sakher Hallak, who ran an eating disorders clinic in Aleppo, was discovered by the side of a road a few days after his arrest on 25 May. Sources told Amnesty International that his injuries included broken ribs, arms and fingers, gouged eyes and mutilated genitals.

BBC here. Al-Jazeera have an interview with a brother of one of the victims, a prominent doctor.

Comments

[Dom]

This site shows what happens to syrians even AFTER they are killed:

http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2011/08/rivers-of-blood-in-syria.html