EPARescue staff from the White Helmets say they’ve ended their search operation for doable detainees in secret cells or basements at Syria’s infamous Saydnaya army jail with out discovering anybody.
Specialised groups assisted by K9 canine models and people accustomed to the format combed the jail and its grounds on Monday, as crowds gathered within the hope of discovering their lacking kinfolk.
“The search didn’t uncover any unopened or hidden areas inside the facility,” a White Helmets assertion stated.
The information got here as insurgent fighters stated they’d discovered nearly 40 our bodies exhibiting indicators of torture within the mortuary of a hospital within the capital, Damascus.
In the meantime, the chief of the Islamist militant group whose offensive led to the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday stated former senior officers who oversaw the torture of political prisoners throughout the nation’s 13-year civil struggle can be held accountable.
Abu Mohammed al-Jolani stated the names of the officers can be revealed and repatriation sought for many who had fled to different international locations. Rewards would even be provided to anybody who supplied details about their whereabouts, he added.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, says nearly 60,000 individuals have been tortured and killed within the Assad authorities’s prisons.
Human rights teams say greater than 100,000 individuals have disappeared since Assad ordered a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 2011 that triggered the civil struggle.
EPAThe Turkey-based Affiliation of Detainees and the Lacking in Sednaya Jail (ADMSP) stated in a 2022 report that the jail “successfully grew to become a demise camp” after the beginning of the battle.
It estimated that greater than 30,000 detainees had both been executed or died on account of torture, lack of medical care or hunger on the facility between 2011 and 2018.
It additionally cited launched inmates as saying that at the very least one other 500 detainees had been executed between 2018 and 2021.
ADMSP additionally described how “salt chambers” have been constructed to function primitive mortuaries to retailer our bodies earlier than they have been transferred to Tishreen Navy Hospital in Damascus for registration and burial in graves on army land. The detainees’ households have been by no means given their our bodies, it stated.
Amnesty Worldwide used the phrase “human slaughterhouse” to explain Saydnaya and alleged that the executions had been authorised on the highest ranges of the Assad authorities, and that such practices amounted to struggle crimes and crimes towards humanity.
The Assad authorities dismissed Amnesty’s claims as “baseless” and “devoid of fact”, insisting that each one executions in Syria adopted due course of.
