The Syrian Network for Human Rights has released a report detailing death certificates for thousands of people who were forcibly disappeared by the Syrian regime. Amnesty International previously reported that approximately 13,000 detainees were executed in Sadynaya prison in Damascus as of 2017. Photo by Amnesty/
Report
Dec. 20 (UPI) -- The Syrian Network Human Rights has released a report documenting 1,609 death certificates of people who were forcibly disappeared by the Syrian government.
The report reveals that between 2018 and 2021 the SNHR received about 1,062 death certificates for people who had been detained by the regime. Since the beginning of 2022 the SNHR obtained 547 death certificates for people forcibly disappeared into regime prisons. The documents do not provide causes of death. Amongst the dead are 24 children, 21 women and 16 medics.
"The report stresses that the system adopted by the Syrian regime to register forcibly disappeared persons dead without notifying their families is a damning demonstration of the regime's fascism and its chilling contempt for the lives of its citizens who are subjected to a level of barbarism that blatantly violates every norm and law," reads a press release from the SNHR Tuesday.
Many of the documents were secretly obtained from Syrian government offices which had no intention of sharing them with the public.
"After obtaining hundreds of death certificates that have never been made public before, we can now confirm as a fact what we have long suspected, namely that the families of these dead people were never notified that their loved ones had been registered as dead at the civil registry," said SNHR director Fadel Abdul Ghany. "We are referring here to people who were arrested by the Syrian regime and who then went on to become forcibly disappeared, with no one knowing anything about their fate."
The regime has not returned the bodies of those killed or provided information about where they are buried. Four of the death certificates match individuals whose bodies were identified in leaked photos from Syrian regime military hospitals.
The documentation of deaths is handled by a complex system within the Syrian regime hierarchy. The National Security Office sends reports to the Military Police who organize the data for the Ministry of Interior which then sends selected information to Civil Registry Offices.
Some of the death certificates are shared with families seeking information on missing persons and some are intended for internal use and are not shared with the public. Most of the death certificates intended to be released to families showed Damascus, which is home to Syria's largest detention centers, as the location of death. Most of the death certificates which were intended for internal use list the Tishreen Military Hospital or Field Military Court as the place of death. The SNHR believes the locations listed indicate the victims were executed.
The documents show that the greatest percentage of the victims were arrested in 2012, followed by 2013 and 2014, which coincides with the highest rates of forced disappearances in the conflict. The highest percentage of deaths was recorded in 2014, followed by 2013 and 2015, which coincides with the highest documented number of deaths due to torture recorded by the SNHR.
While the new documents shed light on a system of mass killing, they only provide a glimpse into the fate of nearly 110,000 Syrians who have been forcibly disappeared since March 2011, according to the SNHR.
In recent years a number of leaked videos have shed light on the Syrian regime's treatment of prisoners. Earlier this year The Guardian released footage of a 2013 incident where regime militia executed 41 civilians, many from the Palestinian community, in Tadamon, Damascus governate.
Amnesty International reports that up to 13,000 people have been executed in Saydnaya prison in Damascus as of 2017.
