ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - In a new report Amnesty International estimates that up to 18,000 have died in regime jails in Syria in the 2011-15 period after being subjected to everything from beatings to rape and torture. Amnesty says that at least 17,723 people died in custody from the start of the ongoing conflict in March 2011 until December 2015. The rights group reviewed documents and interviewed 65 people who survived torture in these jails who described what they saw and went through. “They treated us like animals. They wanted people to be as inhuman as possible,” a former inmate named Samer told Amnesty. “I saw the blood, it was like a river… I never imagined humanity would reach such a low level… they would have had no problem killing us right there and then,” he added. Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa Director Philip Luther believes that these acts are clear crimes against humanity. “For decades Syrian government forces have used torture as a means to crush their opponents,” he said. “Today, it is being carried out as part of a systematic and widespread attack directed against anyone suspected of opposing the government in the civilian population and amounts to crimes against humanity.” The Amnesty release follows a UN report on human rights in February which concluded that the Syrian regime was carrying out a state policy of extermination against detainees in its jails. The UN human rights investigator, Sergio Pinheiro, came to a similar conclusion to Luther when he said in a statement on the UN’s investigation: “Government officials intentionally maintained such poor conditions of detention for prisoners as to have been life-threatening, and were aware that mass deaths of detainees would result.” “These actions,” he added, “in pursuance of state policy, amount to extermination as a crime against humanity.”
