Syrian torture

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SYRIAN security forces are responsible for systematic violations of human rights, including torture and political killings, says Amnesty International in a new report. d A network of Syrian security services act with impunity under the country's emergency decrees, and 'no-one can depend on the protection of the law'. Thousands of people have been harassed and wrongfully detained without chance of appeal, and in some cases tortured and even killed by security forces.

Those arbitrarily arrested may be held without charge or trial for years. Amnesty says it has been working this year for the release of 17 people held in preventive detention for over 12 years and another 300 held for between two and nine years.

Hostage

The report refers to cases of relatives being held hostage while security forces sought political suspects. Such hostages, it says, have included wives and young children - and in one case three relatives were held in detention for nine years before being released in 1980.

Torture is often inflicted during incommunicado detention, and 'there is no clear limit to the length of time detainees may be held incommunicado' The report lists 23 methods of ill-treatment and torture reported by former detainees, including electric shocks, burnings, whippings with braided steel cable, sexual violations, and forcing detainees to watch relatives being tortured or sexually assaulted. * Extracts from testimony by 12 former detainees who alleged torture are cited. They include a 15 year old schoolboy who said he had been whipped and that his interrogator had threatened to gouge his eyes out if he did not reveal his father's whereabouts.

Torture Another former detainee describes a sound-proofed torture chamber in Aleppo equipped with 'torture tools', including electrical apparatus, pincers, scissors, a machine used for sexual violation, and an implement for 'ripping out fingernails' The security forces are also believed to be responsible for political killings of selected individuals or groups and to have assassinated several opponents of the government abroad, the report says.

It cites six cases of mass political killings alleged to have been carried out by the authorities between March 1980 and February 1982. They include the reported killings on June 27 1980 of between 600 and 1000 inmates of Palmyra Prison suspected of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The réport refers also to thousands of killings in February 1982, when the authorities announced that their forces had crushed an uprising in the town of Hama. According to various estimates, between 10,000 to 25,000 people are reported to have died before order was re-established.