The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights

SOHR: 60 prisoners freed in unprecedented amnesty

The Syrian authorities have released some 60 detainees since Sunday under a new amnesty decree, considered the most comprehensive since the start of the conflict and which applies to crimes related to “terrorism”, an official said on Monday. Syrian NGO.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had already announced several amnesties since the start of the war in 2011, which included numerous exceptions, including the last one in May 2021, a few weeks before his re-election for a fourth term.

“A general amnesty”

“More than 60 detainees have been released since Sunday in several Syrian regions, and some have spent at least ten years” in the regime’s prisons, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

The decree provides “to grant a general amnesty for terrorist crimes committed by Syrians” before April 30, 2022, “with the exception of those resulting in the death of a human being and those provided for by the anti-terrorism law”, the Syrian presidency said on social media on Saturday.

This new decree, published on Saturday – two days before Eid al-Fitr, a Muslim holiday which celebrates the end of Ramadan – is considered by human rights activists to be the most comprehensive.

“Tens of thousands of detainees” eligible

According to the director of the SOHR, Rami Abdel Rahmane, “tens of thousands of detainees” are eligible, many of whom are accused of crimes related to “terrorism”. Rami Abdel Rahmane describes this accusation as “vague” to “convict the detainees arrested arbitrarily”.

According to a list of 20 names circulated by activists on social media, detainees who spent years in Sednaya prison, which Amnesty International called a “human slaughterhouse”, are among those released. Lawyer Noura Ghazi said the new amnesty was “the broadest since the beginning of the Syrian revolution, as it includes all terrorist crimes except those that caused death”.

Director of the organization “No Photo Zone” which provides legal assistance to the families of detainees and missing persons, Noura Ghazi expects many more to be released “but it will take time”. The decree “seems to be a reaction (to revelations about the) al-Tadamon massacre” near Damascus in 2013, and its issuance now amounts to a “provocation” of the regime, she said.

More than 100,000 dead in regime prisons

Last week, the British daily The Guardian and the Newslines Institute in Washington published articles and videos that reveal the execution of dozens of people by regime forces in al-Tadamon in 2013.

One of the videos, filmed in April 2013, shows a member of the regime forces in military uniform ordering blindfolded men with their hands tied to run towards a mass grave. The men are slaughtered one by one before falling into the pit. The bodies were then cremated.

There was no official reaction from Damascus about the massacre. Since the start of the conflict, nearly half a million people have entered the regime’s prisons and more than a hundred thousand of them have died under torture or as a result of appalling conditions of detention, according to the SOHR .

 

 

 

Source: 24newsrecorder