UN: Assad regime pursuing extermination

The United Nations yesterday summoned up the spectre of Nazi Germany to describe Syria’s Assad regime, accusing it of using “extermination as a crime against humanity”.

An official report, the harshest it has produced against the leadership of President Bashar al-Assad since the start of the conflict, said it was detaining and killing civilians “on a massive scale”.

The special UN commission of inquiry on Syria interviewed former in- mates of Syrian prisons, which have already been the subject of major reports. One was based on extraordinary and graphic photographs of victims – said to be 11,000 in all – who had been starved and tortured to death.

That prompted activists to compare the regime to the Nazis’ death camps, a comparison the UN team seemed to echo.

“The government has committed the crimes against humanity of extermination, murder, rape or other forms of sexual violence, torture, imprisonment, enforced disappearance and oth- er inhuman acts,” it concluded. “Based on the same conduct, war crimes have also been committed.”

The report was based on more than 600 interviews, including 200 with former detainees who had directly witnessed deaths in custody.

It said that the killings had taken place with “logistical support involving vast state resources” and with the knowledge of high-ranking regime officials.

One member of the commission, Carla del Ponte, accused the UN security council of “doing nothing”.