The Syrian Human Rights Committee (SHRC) has learnt from numerous sources in the Syrian capital, that detainees in Sednaya Military Prison, west Damascus, are being subjected to a massacre in which dozens have been killed and injured. Although the prison and intelligence authorities have taken measures to keep this matter discreet, the sources have confirmed that smoke was seen to be emerging from the prison buildings. It is not clear whether this fire was a result of shooting or a product of the release of smoke grenades on prison cells.
It is also important to note that the majority of political detainees in Sednaya prison are of an Islamic background, and they are exposed to the most brutal treatment and horrific torture, as well as the greatest violation of their rights as humans.
SHRC, which had been pursuing the deterioration of the conditions in the Syrian Prisons, increase in torture and ill treatment, and the massive campaign of arrests against the Islamists with increasing worry, had warned of the possibility of new massacres occurring on the same manner and scale as the massacres that were perpetrated in the 1980s in Tadmur, Mezze, Kafr-Soose and other slaughter houses of the Syrian regime.
SHRC strongly condemns the shooting and killing of defenceless detainees, and calls upon President Bashar Al-Asad to put an immediate end to this ongoing massacre, and to set up an independent inquiry into the reasons that led to this massacre, as well as the trial and punishment of the perpetrators of this crime, both commanders and executors.
SHRC also calls upon the Syrian people and all local and international human rights groups to confirm the facts surrounding the massacre, the current deteriorating and appalling conditions in Syrian prisons, the brutality of the Intelligence and its absolute power to kill as it wishes. SHRC also calls upon all to cooperate in putting an end to the violation of the right to live and freedom of creed and expression. It condemns the continuous killing and arbitrary and repressive arrests practised by the Syrian Intelligence on a wide scale.
Syrian Human Rights Committee
5/7/2008