Syria’s war: regime accused of a host of crimes

PARIS: The Syrian regime has been accused of various crimes during the conflict that started in 2011, including torture in prisons, summary executions and the use of chemical weapons.

Here is an overview:

THE ´CAESAR´ DOSSIER: A former Syrian army photographer known by the pseudonym "Caesar" fled the country in 2013, taking with him some 55,000 photographs documenting abuse and torture.

The photos Caesar brought out of Syria show people with their eyes gouged out, emaciated bodies, people with wounds on the back or stomach, and also a picture of hundreds of corpses lying in a shed surrounded by plastic bags used for burials. The dossier is being used by international bodies including the United Nations as part of an investigation into the regime´s role in "mass torture".

The monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says at least 100,000 people have died from torture or harsh conditions in regime custody since the conflict began.

Already in 2012, Human Rights Watch said Syria was holding tens of thousands of detainees in a "torture archipelago". It documented 27 detention facilities nationwide used to hold people swept up in the government´s crackdown on protesters. Witnesses described torture, including beatings, the use of electricity or car battery acid, sexual assault and mock executions.

‘EXTERMINATION’: In February 2016, UN investigators said "the mass scale of deaths of detainees suggests that the government of Syria is responsible for acts that amount to extermination". A year later, Amnesty International said as many as 13,000 people were hanged between 2011 and 2015 at the notorious Saydnaya military-run prison near Damascus. This came on top of the 17,700 people it had already estimated as having perished in regime custody since the start of the conflict.

In May 2017, Washington claimed that Damascus had built a "crematorium" at Saydnaya to cover up thousands of prisoner deaths. Human rights groups in March this year warned of a "catastrophe" if the novel coronavirus pandemic hit the regime´s overcrowded and squalid prisons, where inmates are crammed into cells and often denied medical care.