Before presidential election | Al-Assad grants amnesty for several categories of crime

As the head of the Syrian regime Bashar al-Assad issued, yesterday, legislative Decree No. 13 for 2021, granting a “general amnesty” for misdemeanors, contraventions, and other categories of crime committed before May 2, SOHR activists have monitored growing popular anger, discontent and irony, especially since the decree was issued before the presidential election scheduled on May 26. The “general amnesty” also comes at a time when the Syrian regime continue disregarding the fate of tens of thousands of detainees and the forcibly disappeared.

 

According to SOHR statistics, 968,651 people, including 154,984 women, were detained by regime security services since the beginning of the “Syrian Revolution”, while the number of civilians who have died under torture in regime’s prisons since the beginning of the “Syrian Revolution” has reached 16,256 fatalities, all documented by names: 16,067 men and young men, 125 children under the age of eighteen, and 64 women over the age of eighteen.

 

Reliable sources have informed the Syrian Observatory that the number of people killed, executed and/or died in regime prisons exceeded 105,297 people. Over 83% of the total death toll were killed and/or died in these prisons between May 2013 and October 2015. SOHR sources have also confirmed that more than 30,000 detainees were killed in the notorious prison of Sednaya alone, while the second largest percentage of killing occurred in the Air Force Intelligence detention facilities or prisons.

 

It is worth noting that the recent number of detainees in regime’s prisons and forcibly disappeared people approximates 280,416 people, they are as follows:

 

• 152,342 people detained in regime prisons, including 41,293 women.

 

• 128,074 forcibly disappeared people, including 20,315 women.

 

Moreover, the number of terrorism files in the competent court has reached 102,453 files.

 

We, at the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, renew our appeals and calls to the international community, particularly the secretary-general of the United Nations, the UN Security Council and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), to spare no effort to disclose the fate of tens of thousands of forcibly disappeared people and announce the results to the Syrian, regional and international general opinion, and most importantly to their grieving families. We also call upon the international courts to put priorities bringing all criminals, perpetrators and all those who aided and abated such heinous crimes to involved in the disappearance and killing of thousands to justice so that they can be held accountable for their crimes against the Syrian people.