I. The restoration of relations with the Syrian regime further encourages it to kill thousands of Syrian citizens under torture. Torture is organically linked to the process of arbitrary arrest and enforced disappearance, but is not limited to these multifaceted crimes. Since the beginning of the popular uprising in March 2011, the practices put in place by the regime’s security apparatus have expanded exponentially. Indeed, the security forces can detain, humiliate, ill-treat, torture and, if they wish, release any Syrian citizen because they have unlimited powers that make it impossible to hold regime officials accountable. In cases of arbitrary arrest, which can last for years, the levels of torture increase and become more sophisticated over time, potentially leading to death by torture or by medical negligence, which is itself a form of torture. Torture practices carried out by the regime’s security services can be seen in all Syrian provinces. This is not unusual, as the system used by the regime’s security agencies is based on subordination to a centralized authority that practices deliberate, calculated and uniform torture policies. The fact that hundreds of thousands of Syrians are suffering horrific torture, which has been fatal in thousands of cases, only further confirms that this is a deliberate, calculated policy by the Syrian regime that constitutes a crime against humanity against the Syrian people, invalidating any attempt to claim a legal right in power. In theory, since the protection of the Syrian people is a core part of the responsibilities of the ruling authority, ensuring the safety and well-being of the people should always be paramount and stand above any ruler. In reality, however, the Syrian regime has failed to launch a single investigation or hold a single officer accountable for unspeakably horrific violations committed by any of its officials, even after the deaths of at least 15,000 Syrian citizens due to torture in recent years years. In fact, as we have noted, some of the officials and individuals involved in torture practices were promoted as a reward for their loyalty. engaging with the regime in the systematic practice of torture. As mentioned earlier, torture is an offense that is organically linked to the multifaceted violations committed in the regime’s detention centers, as well as those inflicted by other parties to the conflict and controlling powers. Torture has been routinely practiced for more than 12 years. Today, over 155,000 people are still arrested and/or forcibly disappeared at the hands of parties to the conflict and controlling forces in Syria, according to information contained in databases maintained by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR). The Syrian regime is responsible for 88 percent of all cases of enforced disappearance, and the vast majority of these detainees are political prisoners who were detained in the context of the popular uprising, all of whom have been subjected to one or more forms of torture in for years. It is important to remember that there is no time limit or other limitation on the torture applied to detainees, which begins from the first moment after the victim’s detention, which is carried out without any parameters that can even remotely be described as ‘legal’. What follows is endless suffering under the regime’s systematic and vast torture machine of various forms; we will outline them in this report, which is the result of our continuous monitoring of torture cases and our extensive communication with the families of survivors and victims, which allowed us to collect large amounts of information and evidence, each element of which was carefully checked and cross-checked , to ensure strict levels of credibility and objectivity, with SNHR documenting and storing all this information in a special database designed specifically for victims of torture. Among the worst, most shameful aspects of these torture violations, which we will also summarize here through the use of cumulative graphs, is the fact that these violations continue to this day, with no accountability for anyone involved, not even the most -the low-ranking perpetrators. This impunity has led to an increase in the numbers of torture documented over the years, further encouraging perpetrators to step up and even flaunt the level and scale of brutality used in detention centers. At the same time, this shameful impunity has created a sense of pessimism and despair among the Syrian people, coupled with an overwhelming sense of hopelessness and a lack of faith that the perpetrators will ever be brought to justice or held accountable while in Syria, or that their violations against Syrians will ever end. While the positive significance of the trials and convictions of a handful of regime officials in other nations under the principle of universal jurisdiction cannot be denied, the Syrian regime has no real concern for such cases due to their limited effect. One such case is that of Anwar. R., who was sentenced by the Higher District Court in Koblenz, Germany on January 13, 2022. Anwar. R. was on trial for his involvement in the Syrian regime’s torture machine by heading the interrogation department in Branch No. 251 (al-Khatib Branch), which is affiliated with the Syrian regime’s General Intelligence Directorate, between January 2011. and September 2012. In this process, SNHR provided a file containing details of 58 Syrian nationals who died due to torture in al-Khatib branch during Anwar R.’s tenure as head of interrogation. SNHR also provided supporting data in Dr Alaa’s trial. M., who is charged with crimes amounting to crimes against humanity. A total of 18 charges were listed in his indictment, which included killing, torturing and causing physical and mental harm to detainees held by the Syrian regime on the grounds of their political opposition, with the crimes committed between 2011 and 2012 in military hospitals in Homs and Damascus, as well as Military Intelligence Prison 261 in Homs. Fadel Abdul Ghani, executive director of SNHR, said: “This report comes at a time when some Arab countries have decided to restore relations with the Syrian regime. We want this report to show these countries and others that the Syrian regime is still practicing the most horrific methods of torture against women, children and all arbitrarily detained victims, who currently number approximately 136,000. The restoration of relations with the Syrian regime before the release of detainees gives the regime the green light to eliminate these detainees. It is well known that the regime has a brutal history, including the killing of thousands of political dissidents.
Methodology On 26 June each year, SNHR publishes its annual report on torture in Syria to mark the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. Our team works tirelessly to document new cases of torture each year and to monitor the torture methods used by parties to the conflict and controlling forces in Syria to assess whether torture practices have continued at the same rate or decreased. Such an assessment is usually made by comparing more recent statistics with those included in last year’s report. While SNHR regularly reports on survivors of torture or deaths due to torture, our annual report provides a more comprehensive picture of torture in Syria, as it includes up-to-date information on the number of deaths of victims who have died due to torture since the start of the popular uprising . in March 2011 until the date of publication of this annual report (in this case until June 2023). This comprehensive update is based on the new figures and cases documented in the previous year. We hope that this periodic report can inform decision-makers around the world about the reality of torture in Syria. In our work, we use the definition of torture given in the 1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Article 1 of the Convention states that torture “means any act by which severe pain or suffering, physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act which he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidation or coercion him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, where such pain or suffering is caused by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of an official or other person acting in his capacity as Position. It does not include pain or suffering arising solely from, inherent in, or incidental to legal sanctions.” This report is based on interviews we conducted with families of victims and survivors of torture who have been released from detention centers controlled by the various countries in the conflict. We conducted the interviews with the usual utmost care and concern for the safety and well-being of the victims as well as SNHR team members. We used a variety of means to conduct the interviews, including telephone calls and various communication applications, as well as personal visits in Syria and abroad. This report contains 20 accounts, all of which we obtained directly and not from secondhand sources. In some of the interviews, we used pseudonyms to preserve the confidentiality of the eyewitnesses and to protect them from being stalked or pursued by security forces. Eyewitnesses were not compensated or promised compensation for agreeing to the interviews. We informed them of the purpose of the report and obtained their permission to use the information they provided in service of the purposes of this report and our documentation efforts in accordance with our internal protocols, which we have strictly adhered to for years and which we are always striving to update , to ensure optimal levels of psychological care for victims. It is important to note that all the figures included in this report reflect cases of a different nature, which is natural in the context of Syria and the extraordinary challenges we face in the course of our work. Regardless of the incident, we ensure that the following details are included for each case: name, date and place of detention, circumstances of detention, party responsible for arrest, enforced disappearance and torture, last time the victim was seen, and most -the newly available documents for the victim, in addition to other details. Our IT team has designed special software to maintain a database for each party to the conflict, which includes features to categorize cases by province, gender, social/academic status, age group and place of arrest. All data is entered automatically. As such, the SNHR database allows us to sort cases based on the province where the arrest took place or the victim’s province of origin. In this report, we have sorted the cases by the governorate of origin rather than the governorate where the torture took place, as the place of the incident or violation was, in the vast majority of cases, the detention centers located in the city of Damascus. The second reason for this decision is to give an idea of the scale of loss and violence that each province has suffered in comparison to other provinces. We have data protection protocols in place in the SNHR databases in addition to the backup copies we hold. In light of the extreme difficulties faced in documenting and the scale of violations in Syria, this report reflects only the bare minimum of the violations actually committed there. The actual death toll is much higher. This report also does not cover the psychological effects suffered by survivors of torture. For more details, please see our methodology. http://sn4hr.org/public_html/wp-content/pdf/english/SNHR_Methodology_en.pdf