Syria opens up on prison slaughter of thousands
THE Syrian government has begun updating the records of tens of thousands of activists who disappeared during the early stages of the seven-year civil war in the first tacit admission that many of them died while held by the regime.
Families who have spent years awaiting answers over loved ones are now streaming into civil registry offices to collect the final official recognition of an estimated 13,000 deaths in detention.
Experts believe that Russia has pushed Bashar al-Assad’s government to draw a line under the deaths as a first step to possible “reconciliation”, which a war-weary Moscow is eager to bring about.
The 400 certificates issued so far have mostly recorded verdicts of heart attacks or strokes, but relatives suspect detainees were probably tortured to death or hanged without trial. None have had the bodies of loved ones returned or been told where they can find them.
Amnesty International has described the Sednaya prison outside Damascus as a “human slaughterhouse”, where detainees have been killed on an industrial scale.
In a report released last year, the civil rights group said at least 13,000 people had been executed in secret.
It was claimed that on the site of the prison complex, which sits in the hills above Syria’s capital, was a crematorium used to “manage” the sheer numbers of bodies.
The issue of political prisoners is one of the thorniest and most sensitive of the war and has been the major sticking point at peace talks – both at the UNsponsored negotiations in Geneva and those backed by Russia, Iran and Turkey.
Hassan Hassan, senior fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, agreed that Assad’s was a calculated move, rather than a sudden pang of conscience.
“This makes sense these days after the regime has secured most of the south,” he said. “The regime has been preparing for the post-war period through new legitimations and this might be part of it.” (© Daily Telegraph, London)