ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — As many as 13,000 people, most of them civilians, were executed by Bashar al-Assad's Syrian government in mass hangings every week and sometimes more often between 2011 and 2015, according to a human rights organization.
The mass hangings took place at Saydnaya, a military prison near the capital of Damascus in Syria.
“The horrors depicted in this report reveal a hidden, monstrous campaign, authorized at the highest levels of the Syrian government, aimed at crushing any form of dissent within the Syrian population,” said Lynn Maalouf, Deputy Director for Research at Amnesty International’s regional office in Beirut, in the report.
The findings were based on a one-year investigation from December 2015 to December 2016 that involved first-hand interviews with 84 witnesses including "former Saydnaya guards and officials, detainees, judges and lawyers, as well as national and international experts on detention in Syria."
Maalouf called on the Syrian regime to end the executions and for the international community to take immediate action.
“We demand that the Syrian authorities immediately cease extrajudicial executions and torture and inhuman treatment at Saydnaya Prison and in all other government prisons across Syria. Russia and Iran, the government’s closest allies, must press for an end to these murderous detention policies," Maalouf said.
Amnesty called on the United Nations to immediately carry out an independent investigation into the crimes.
The international community has previously criticized Assad's government for human rights violations and war crimes.
In January, the United States sanctioned 18 senior Syrian regime officials for chlorine gas attacks citing the government’s use of sarin gas to attack civilians in the Ghouta area of Damascus, as well as three chlorine gas attacks in Tell Mannas on April 21, 2014, and in Qmenas and Sarmin on March 16, 2015.
"Between 2011 and 2015, every week and often twice a week, groups of up to 50 people were taken out of their prison cells and hanged to death. In five years, as many as 13,000 people, most of them civilians believed to be opposed to the government, were hanged in secret at Saydnaya," wrote Amnesty International in a report released on Monday, which called the prison a “human slaughterhouse.”
The mass hangings took place at Saydnaya, a military prison near the capital of Damascus in Syria.
“The horrors depicted in this report reveal a hidden, monstrous campaign, authorized at the highest levels of the Syrian government, aimed at crushing any form of dissent within the Syrian population,” said Lynn Maalouf, Deputy Director for Research at Amnesty International’s regional office in Beirut, in the report.
The findings were based on a one-year investigation from December 2015 to December 2016 that involved first-hand interviews with 84 witnesses including "former Saydnaya guards and officials, detainees, judges and lawyers, as well as national and international experts on detention in Syria."
The report accused "the highest levels of the Syrian government" of authorizing the killings, which Amnesty said amount to war crimes.
Maalouf called on the Syrian regime to end the executions and for the international community to take immediate action.
“We demand that the Syrian authorities immediately cease extrajudicial executions and torture and inhuman treatment at Saydnaya Prison and in all other government prisons across Syria. Russia and Iran, the government’s closest allies, must press for an end to these murderous detention policies," Maalouf said.
Amnesty called on the United Nations to immediately carry out an independent investigation into the crimes.
Additionally, Amnesty asserted detainees at Saydnaya are not afforded actual trials, but rather a one- or two-minute "Military Field Court," which it calls "summary and arbitrary."
In an August 2016 report, Amnesty estimated that 17,000 people have died in Syrian government prisons across the country since the civil war began in 2011.
"Mass hangings and extermination at Saydnaya prison, Syria also shows that the government is deliberately inflicting inhuman conditions on detainees at Saydnaya Prison through repeated torture and the systematic deprivation of food, water, medicine and medical care," Amnesty wrote.
The international community has previously criticized Assad's government for human rights violations and war crimes.
In January, the United States sanctioned 18 senior Syrian regime officials for chlorine gas attacks citing the government’s use of sarin gas to attack civilians in the Ghouta area of Damascus, as well as three chlorine gas attacks in Tell Mannas on April 21, 2014, and in Qmenas and Sarmin on March 16, 2015.
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