Documenting the Death of 976 Individuals due to Torture in Syria in 2018 Including 12 in December

ARK News: SNHR announced today that at least 976 individuals died due to torture in Syria in 2018, including 12 in December.

The latest SNHR report notes that international law completely prohibits torture and other forms of cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment. This being a customary rule, states can’t dismiss or undermine this rule in favor of other rights or values, even in times of emergency.

The report stresses that torture is being practiced in Syria in a systematic manner to extremely brutal and sadistic degrees. In many cases, torture is perpetrated on the basis of victims’ ethnicity or sect, particularly in the detention centers of the Syrian regime, which has been and continues to be the primary and main perpetrator of all crimes of torture.

According to the report, other parties have also committed crimes of torture, albeit to a far smaller extent than the Syrian regime, with SNHR’s team documenting a notable increase, since 2015, in rates of deaths due to torture at the hands of other parties – particularly at the hands of ISIS and the Self-Management forces, while rates of death due to torture at the hands of armed opposition factions saw an increase since late 2016.

The report draws upon ongoing monitoring of news and developments by the SNHR team, and on an extensive network of contacts with various sources, in addition to speaking with either former detainees, or victims’ families and friends, most of whom can only obtain information about their detained loved ones by bribing senior regime officials.

The report notes that the ability to confirm deaths remains completely subject to ongoing documentation and verification with cases of this nature remaining open in light of the serious difficulties encountered in the documentation process. The cases included in this report represent only a fraction of the actual total number of violations that are being perpetrated.

The report documents that 976 individuals died due to torture at the hands of the parties to the conflict in Syria in 2018. Of this number, 951 died at the hands of Syrian Regime forces, including 11 children and two women. One woman died due to torture at the hands of ISIS, while nine other individuals, including one child, died due to torture at the hands of factions of the Armed Opposition. The report further documents the death of 10 individuals due to torture at the hands of Self-Management forces, while other parties were responsible for the death of five more individuals due to torture.

According to the report, the highest death toll due to torture in 2018 was recorded in Damascus Suburbs governorate, with 271 individuals. The remaining death toll is distributed across governorates as follows:
163 in Homs, 134 in Hasaka, 131 in Hama, 101 in Daraa, 47 in Damascus, 38 in Idlib, 29 in Deir –al-Zour, 25 in Latakia, 24 in Aleppo, nine in Raqqa, and four in Swayda.

The report also contains the death toll due to torture for December, which saw 12 cases of death due to torture documented, all of them in the official and unofficial detention centers of Syrian Regime forces, including three cases in Damascus, two in Homs, Hama, Dei Ez-Zour and Raqqa each and one in Damascus Suburbs.

The report stresses that the Syrian regime has practiced torture through multiple institutions in a widespread manner which constitutes an explicit breach of international human rights law, with these actions qualifying as crimes against humanity. Also, these crimes, which have been perpetrated after the start of the non-international armed conflict, constitute a blatant breach of international human rights law and constitute war crimes. Furthermore, the report notes that the Syrian regime has never launched an investigation, or held those who were involved accountable, but has instead concealed and hidden criminal evidence.

The report calls on the Syrian regime to launch an immediate investigation into all cases of deaths inside detention centers, and to suspend all death sentences since the verdicts in all these cases are based on confessions extracted under brutal torture. Also, the report states that the Commission of Inquiry, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and all objective human rights groups should have immediate access to detention centers. In addition, the report demands action to end all forms of torture.

Source: SNHR

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