Assad blamed for executions

LONDON: A military jail authorised at the highest levels of the Syrian government has overseen a “monstrous campaign” of secret atrocities, including the hanging of up to 13 000 people in five years, Amnesty International said yesterday.

The secret mass hangings were carried out under a “calculated campaign of extrajudicial executions” by President Bashar al-Assad’s government at the Saydnaya prison near Damascus, the human rights group said.

Guards at Saydnaya oversaw weekly – or sometimes twice-weekly – hangings of up to 50 prisoners at a time, most of whom were believed to be government opponents, “in the middle of the night and in total secrecy”.

Up to 13 000 prisoners were executed at the prison from 2011 to 2015, following convictions by military courts after forced confessions, read the report, Human slaughterhouse: Mass hangings and extermination at Saydnaya prison.

It documented “repeated torture and the systematic deprivation of food, water, medicine and medical care”, saying the practices at the prison “amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity”.

Lynn Maalouf, deputy director for research at Amnesty’s regional office in Beirut, said the campaign was “aimed at crushing any form of dissent within the Syrian population”.

“We demand that the Syrian authorities immediately cease extrajudicial executions and torture and inhumane treatment at Saydnaya prison and in all other government prisons across Syria,” Maalouf said.

“Russia and Iran, the government’s closest allies, must press for an end to these murderous detention policies,” she said, adding the Syria peace talks in Geneva “cannot ignore these findings”.

Syrian opposition figure Hisham Marwa said the details in the report came as no surprise. “The report is not new to us. We have presented similar reports about this prison and others to all human rights groups and the UN,” said Marwa.

“Mainly all prisoners inside Saydnaya are political prisoners and most of them were peaceful protesters. They call it the red jail where people are brought in only to be executed or beaten to death. No one enters this so-called red jail and comes out,” added Marwa.

The head of the opposition Syrian National Coalition’s press office, Ahmed Ramadan, hoped the report would highlight the regime’s “crimes”.

“This report should be a restart to what we have been saying for the past five years that this regime is a criminal regime. Thousands of people have been executed inside the prisons,” Ramadan said.

Meanwhile, al-Assad said the EU should have no role in the reconstruction of Syria unless it changed its policy toward the country.

He said EU countries backed opposition fighters who inflicted destruction on Syria and “they cannot destroy and build at the same time”.

Al-Assad also said US President Donald Trump’s campaign statements on fighting terrorism were “promising” but it’s still early to “expect anything” on the ground.

The Syrian president’s remarks were given to Belgian media. Syria’s state news agency, Sana, yesterday released a text of the interview, which was conducted a day earlier.

Syria’s 6-year civil war has killed about 300 000 people and caused much devastation across the country.

An UN official said last month reconstruction would cost about $350 billion (R4.7 trillion).

AUSTRIAN officials say the country’s parliament was the target of a hacker attack on the weekend, and a Turkish group has claimed responsibility.

Parliament spokeswoman Susanna Enk says parliament’s web page was down for about 20 minutes on Sunday but there was no loss of data.

She identified the hackers as Aslan Neferler Tim, a group she said also claimed to be behind cyberattacks last year on the foreign and defence ministries.

A Facebook entry on the group’s site posted on Sunday reads: “Our response to Austria’s racism against Muslims will be stiff!!! (Parliament down.)”

Bilateral relations are tense over strong Austrian criticism of Turkey’s human-rights record, Austria’s opposition to EU membership for Ankara and Turkish complaints that Austria discriminates against Muslims.

Authorities are investigating the attack, the parliament said.

“The hacker attack was most likely a so-called DDoS-attack; a similar attack took place last November targeting the websites of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Ministries,” it said, using the acronym for Distributed Denial of Service attack.

In November, hackers launched a DDoS-attack, among the most common cyber threats, on the European Commission’s computers.

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (Osce) in Vienna was also recently the target of a cyber attack. – AP and Reuters WINNIPEG: A Canadian judge found a mother guilty on Monday of concealing the decomposing remains of her six babies in a storage locker.

Andrea Giesbrecht was charged with six counts of concealing the body of a child in October, 2014.

Staff at storage company U-Haul discovered the stinking bodies in her locker after she fell behind on payments.

Police found the remains of five boys and a girl at gestational ages ranging between 34 and 40 weeks in garbage bags, plastic bins and pails. Each charge carries a maximum two years in jail. – Reuters