UN ‘must act’ on Syria slaughterhouse claims

A handout image released on February 7, 2017 by Amnesty International shows a cemetary next to the military-run Saydnaya prison, one of Syria's largest detention centres located 30 kilometres north of Damascus, in three distinct satellite pictures: one taken on August 5, 2009 (L) , another taken on June 3, 2014 (C) and the third one taken on September 18, 2016. (AFP)
Updated 08 February 2017
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UN ‘must act’ on Syria slaughterhouse claims

JEDDAH/WASHINGTON: A damning report by Amnesty International detailing extrajudicial killings of as many as 13,000 Syrians sparked demands Tuesday for the UN Security Council to hold Bashar Assad to account for war crimes. 

Syrian authorities have killed possibly thousands more detainees since the start of the 2011 uprising in mass hangings at a prison north of Damascus known to detainees as “the slaughterhouse,” Amnesty said on Tuesday.

Dr. Nasr Al-Hariri, a top official in the opposition Syrian National Coalition, told Arab News that “tens” of other detention centers exist in the country.

The executions and treatment of detainees qualify as war crimes and crimes against humanity and “hundreds of thousands” more may be languishing in Syrian jails, Al-Hariri said.

“This brutal regime has been committing war crimes and must be tried as such. If the UN and the Security Council do not take action, then there will be no meaning for their existence as a body to protect humanity,” Al-Hariri said.

Amnesty International’s chilling report, covering the period from 2011 to 2015, said 20-50 people were hanged each week at Saydnaya Prison in killings authorized by senior Syrian officials, including deputies of President Assad, and carried out by military police.

The report referred to the killings as a “calculated campaign of extrajudicial execution.”

Amnesty has recorded at least 35 different methods of torture in Syria since the late 1980s, practices that only increased since 2011, said Lynn Maalouf, deputy director for research at Amnesty’s regional office in Beirut.

Other rights groups have found evidence of torture leading to death in Syrian detention facilities. In a report last year, Amnesty found that more than 17,000 people have died of torture and ill-treatment in custody across Syria since 2011, an average rate of more than 300 deaths a month.

Those figures are comparable to battlefield deaths in Aleppo, one of the fiercest war zones in Syria, where 21,000 were killed across the province since 2011. No international observer has ever set foot inside the Saydnaya prison, according to Amnesty. 

Amnesty’s report comes just two weeks before a new round of talks is due to take place in Switzerland aimed at putting an end to nearly six years of civil war.

“The upcoming Syria peace talks in Geneva cannot ignore these findings. Ending these atrocities in Syrian government prisons must be put on the agenda,” Maalouf told The Associated Press.

The High Negotiations Committee, which is set to represent Syria’s opposition at the talks, said the investigation “leaves no doubts that the regime has carried out war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Anna Neistat, senior director of research at Amnesty International, told Arab News late Tuesday the revelations should be on the table for peace negotiations.

“To establish a long-lasting peace, to have any talks of peace to be meaningful, then this must be part of the peace process,” Neistat said.

Neistat said the UN Security Council has options to put pressure on the Syrian regime to halt executions by taking the Assad government to the International Criminal Court. But Russia, Assad’s ally, stands in the way.

“As long as Russia has veto power that won’t happen,” she said. “But the General Assembly could overturn the Security Council.”

The UN General Assembly can take up the matter if the Security Council fails to move toward a resolution in the international courts. However, whatever action the Assembly takes is largely symbolic since the Security Council is responsible for enforcement. Perhaps the most notable failure of the General Assembly in a similar situation was its 1980 resolution demanding that the Soviet Union withdraw its military forces from Afghanistan. The Soviets ignored the resolution.

Amnesty International’s accounts in Tuesday’s report came from interviews with 31 former detainees and over 50 other officials and experts, including former guards and judges.

According to the findings, detainees were told they would be transferred to civilian detention centers but were taken instead to another building in the facility and hanged.

“They walked in the ‘train,’ so they had their heads down and were trying to catch the shirt of the person in front of them. The first time I saw them, I was horrified. They were being taken to the slaughterhouse,” Hamid, a former detainee, told Amnesty.

Another former detainee, Omar Alshogre, told The Associated Press the guards would come to his cell, sometimes three times a week, and call out detainees by name.

Alshogre said a torture session would begin before midnight in nearby chambers that he could hear.

“Then the sound would stop, and we would hear a big vehicle come and take them away,” said Alshogre, who spent nine months in Saydnaya. Now 21, he lives in Sweden.

Alshogre survived nine months in the prison, paying his way out in 2015 — a common practice. He suffered from tuberculosis and his weight fell to 35 kilograms.

Maha Akeel, director of communications at the Jeddah-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) said: “The Syrian regime should be held accountable for what can only be described as war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

She urged the international community to take immediate action to stop “these horrific human rights violations and abuses.”

“With such credible reports as this one by Amnesty International, the UN Security Council in particular should have the moral responsibility to remove this bloody regime from power,” Akeel told Arab News.

A US State Department official told Arab News on condition of anonymity that the US administration is “in the process of looking at the report but our initial assessment is that we’re not surprised by its allegations.” 

Tobias Schneider, a defense analyst and an expert on the Syrian war, said “the horrors described in this latest report, disturbing as they are, do not come as a surprise to those familiar with the merciless cruelty of Assad’s security services.” On its impact on the international community, Schneider is doubtful that it will change the narrative.

“Almost six years after the revolution, there is little reason to hope that Amnesty’s most recent revelations would change the fundamental calculus of those who long ago decided to abandon the Syrian people to their fates,” he added.

At best for Assad opponents, the expert sees the report magnifying “the sheer scale of the horror” that could be used to “slow (the) drift in Western capitals toward re-normalization of (the) Assad regime.” 

However, Schneider added that “with the US strategically sidelined, and a majority of European states even slowly pushing for rapprochement with Damascus, forcefully worded statements and public hand-wringing by government officials is likely the most we can expect.”

Where the report might make a difference is in the legal procedures against the Assad regime. Schneider cites “the court case filed last week in Spain, where the report can help build a historical record that may aid exiled Syrians trying to permanently entrench opposition to the Assad regime in Western policy circles."

 


Israeli ultra-orthodox party leaves Netanyahu’s government due to dispute over military conscription bill

Updated 10 sec ago
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Israeli ultra-orthodox party leaves Netanyahu’s government due to dispute over military conscription bill

TEL AVIV: Israel’s ultra-orthodox party Degel HaTorah said in a statement its Knesset members have resigned from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government due to a dispute over failure to draft a bill to exempt Yeshiva students from military service. 

 


More than 100 migrants freed in Libya after being held captive by gang, officials say

Updated 21 min 41 sec ago
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More than 100 migrants freed in Libya after being held captive by gang, officials say

  • As of December 2024, around 825,000 migrants from 47 countries were recorded in Libya, according to UN data released in May

BENGHAZI: More than 100 migrants, including five women, have been freed from captivity after being held for ransom by a gang in eastern Libya, the country’s attorney general said on Monday.
“A criminal group involved in organizing the smuggling of migrants, depriving them of their freedom, trafficking them, and torturing them to force their families to pay ransoms for their release,” a statement from the attorney general said.
Libya has become a transit route for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe via the dangerous route across the desert and over the Mediterranean following the toppling of Muammar Qaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011.
Many migrants desperate to make the crossing have fallen into the hands of traffickers. The freed migrants had been held in Ajdabiya, some 160 km (100 miles) from Libya’s second city Benghazi.
Five suspected traffickers from Libya, Sudan and Egypt, have been arrested, officials said.
The attorney general and Ajdabiya security directorate posted pictures of the migrants on their Facebook pages which they said had been retrieved from the suspects’ mobile phones.
They showed migrants with hands and legs cuffed with signs that they had been beaten.
In February, at least 28 bodies were recovered from a mass grave in the desert north of Kufra city. Officials said a gang had subjected the migrants to torture and inhumane treatment.
That followed another 19 bodies being found in a mass grave in the Jikharra area, also in southeastern Libya, a security directorate said, blaming a known smuggling network.
As of December 2024, around 825,000 migrants from 47 countries were recorded in Libya, according to UN data released in May.
Last week, the EU migration commissioner and ministers from Italy, Malta and Greece met with the internationally recognized prime minister of the national unity government, Abdulhamid Dbeibah, and discussed the migration crisis. 

 


Mediators working to bridge gaps in faltering Gaza truce talks

Updated 46 min 1 sec ago
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Mediators working to bridge gaps in faltering Gaza truce talks

  • Hamas’s top negotiator, Khalil Al-Hayya, and the leadership of Hamas and Islamic Jihad held a “consultative meeting” in Doha on Sunday evening to “coordinate visions and positions,” a Palestinian source with knowledge of the talks told AFP
  • US President Donald Trump said he was still hopeful of securing a truce deal, telling reporters on Sunday night: “We are talking and hopefully we’re going to get that straightened out over the next week”

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Stuttering Gaza ceasefire talks entered a second week on Monday, with meditators seeking to close the gap between Israel and Hamas, as more than 20 people were killed across the Palestinian territory.
The indirect negotiations in Qatar appear deadlocked after both sides blamed the other for blocking a deal for the release of hostages and a 60-day ceasefire after 21 months of fighting.
An official with knowledge of the talks said they were “ongoing” in Doha on Monday, telling AFP: “Discussions are currently focused on the proposed maps for the deployment of Israeli forces within Gaza.”
“Mediators are actively exploring innovative mechanisms to bridge the remaining gaps and maintain momentum in the negotiations,” the source added on condition of anonymity.
Hamas accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who wants to see the Palestinian militant group destroyed — of being the main obstacle.
“Netanyahu is skilled at sabotaging one round of negotiations after another, and is unwilling to reach any agreement,” the group wrote on Telegram.
In Gaza, the civil defense agency said at least 22 people were killed Monday in the latest Israeli strikes in and around Gaza City and in Khan Yunis in the south.
An Israeli military statement said troops had destroyed “buildings and terrorist infrastructure” used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza City’s Shujaiya and Zeitun areas.
The Al-Quds Brigades — the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, which has fought alongside Hamas — released footage on Monday that it said showed its fighters firing missiles at an Israeli army command and control center near Shujaiya.
The military later on Monday said three soldiers — aged 19, 20 and 21 — “fell during combat in the northern Gaza Strip” and died in hospital on Monday. Another from the same battalion was severely injured.

US President Donald Trump said he was still hopeful of securing a truce deal, telling reporters on Sunday night: “We are talking and hopefully we’re going to get that straightened out over the next week.”
Hamas’s top negotiator, Khalil Al-Hayya, and the leadership of Hamas and Islamic Jihad held a “consultative meeting” in Doha on Sunday evening to “coordinate visions and positions,” a Palestinian source with knowledge of the talks told AFP.
“Egyptian, Qatari and American mediators continue their efforts that make Israel present a modified withdrawal map that would be acceptable,” they added.
On Saturday, the same source said Hamas rejected Israeli proposals to keep troops in more than 40 percent of Gaza, as well as plans to move Palestinians into an enclave on the border with Egypt.
A senior Israeli political official countered by accusing Hamas of inflexibility and trying to deliberately scupper the talks by “clinging to positions that prevent the mediators from advancing an agreement.”

Netanyahu has said he would be ready to enter talks for a more lasting ceasefire once a deal for a temporary truce is agreed, but only when Hamas lays down its arms.
He is under pressure to wrap up the war, with military casualties rising and with public frustration mounting at both the continued captivity of the hostages taken on October 7 and a perceived lack of progress in the conflict.
Politically, Netanyahu’s fragile governing coalition is holding, for now, but he denies being beholden to a minority of far-right ministers in prolonging an increasingly unpopular conflict.
He also faces a backlash over the feasibility, cost and ethics of a plan to build a so-called “humanitarian city” from scratch in southern Gaza to house Palestinians if and when a ceasefire takes hold.
Israel’s security establishment is reported to be unhappy with the plan, which the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Olmert have described as a “concentration camp.”
“If they (Palestinians) will be deported there into the new ‘humanitarian city’, then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing,” Olmert was quoted as saying by The Guardian newspaper late on Sunday.
Hamas’s attack on Israel in 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
A total of 251 hostages were taken that day, of whom 49 are still being held, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s military reprisals have killed 58,386 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

 


Paramilitary attack kills 48 in central Sudan village: war monitor

Updated 15 July 2025
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Paramilitary attack kills 48 in central Sudan village: war monitor

  • Over 4 million refugees have fled Sudan’s more than two-year civil war to seven neighboring countries where shelter conditions are widely viewed as inadequate due to chronic funding shortages

PORT SUDAN: Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killed 48 civilians in an attack on a village in the center of the war-torn country, a monitoring group reported Monday.
The Emergency Lawyers, a group that has documented atrocities throughout the two-year conflict between the regular army and the RSF, reported civilians were killed en masse Sunday when paramilitary fighters stormed the village of Um Garfa in North Kordofan state, razing houses and looting property.
 

 


Two drones fell in Khurmala oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan, counter-terrorism service says

Updated 15 July 2025
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Two drones fell in Khurmala oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan, counter-terrorism service says

  • An investigation into the incident was launched in coordination with security forces in Kurdistan

BAGHDAD: Two drones fell in the Khurmala oilfield in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Iraqi Kurdistan’s counter-terrorism service said in a statement on Monday.
Khurmala oilfield is located near the Iraqi Kurdish city of Irbil.
The Iraqi Security Media Cell, an official body responsible for disseminating security information, said in a statement that no casualties were reported and only material damage was recorded.
An investigation into the incident was launched in coordination with security forces in Kurdistan, it added.