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Syrian government executed thousands of prisoners in mass hangings at Saydnaya prison, says rights watchdog.

The report was based on interviews with 84 witnesses, including former guards, detainees, judges and lawyers [Amnesty International]

by Al Jazeera

As many as 13,000 people were hanged in five years at a notorious Syrian prison near Damascus, Amnesty International has said, accusing the government of a “policy of extermination”.

Titled “Human Slaughterhouse: Mass hanging and extermination at Saydnaya prison,” Amnesty’s damning report, released on Tuesday, is based on interviews with 84 witnesses, including guards, detainees, and judges.

It found that at least once a week between 2011 and 2015, groups of up to 50 people were taken out of their prison cells for arbitrary trials, beaten, then hanged “in the middle of the night and in total secrecy.”

The report said: “Throughout this process, they remain blindfolded. They do not know when or how they will die until the noose was placed around their necks.”

Most of the victims were civilians believed to be opposed to the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

“They kept them [hanging] there for 10 to 15 minutes,” a former judge who witnessed the executions said.

“For the young ones, their weight wouldn’t kill them. The officers’ assistants would pull them down and break their necks,” he said.

Amnesty said the practice amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity, and were probaby still taking place.

Thousands of prisoners are held in the military-run Saydnaya prison, one of the country’s largest detention centres located 30km north of Damascus.

Amnesty accused the Syrian government of carrying out a “policy of extermination”, repeatedly torturing detainees and withholding food, water, and medical care.

Prisoners were also raped or forced to rape each other, and guards would feed detainees by tossing meals on to the cell floor, which was often covered in dirt and blood, the report said.

‘Hidden, monstrous campaign’

A twisted set of “special rules” governed the facility: detainees were not allowed to speak and must assume certain positions when guards entered their cells.

“Every day there would be two or three dead people in our wing … I remember the guard would ask how many we had. He would say, ‘Room No 1 – how many? Room No 2 – how many?’ and on and on,” said Nader, a former detainee whose name has been changed.

After one fierce day of beating, Nader said, 13 people died in a single wing of the prison.

One former military officer said he could hear “gurgling” as people were hanged in an execution room below.

“If you put your ears on the floor, you could hear the sound of a kind of gurgling,” said Hamid, who was arrested in 2011.

“We were sleeping on top of the sound of people choking to death. This was normal for me then,” he told Amnesty.

According to the report, the bodies were taken away by the truckload to be secretly buried in mass graves. Their families were given no information about their fate.

Amnesty has previously said that more than 17,700 people were estimated to have died in government custody across Syria since the country’s conflict erupted in 2011.

The figure of 13,000 deaths in a single prison, therefore, is a marked increase.

“The horrors depicted in this report reveal a hidden, monstrous campaign, authorised at the highest levels of the Syrian government, aimed at crushing any form of dissent within the Syrian population,” said Lynn Maalouf, deputy director for research at Amnesty’s Beirut office.

“The cold-blooded killing of thousands of defenceless prisoners, along with the carefully crafted and systematic programmes of psychological and physical torture that are in place inside Saydnaya prison cannot be allowed to continue,” she said.

An investigation by the United Nations last year accused Assad’s government of a policy of “extermination” in its jails.

The UN estimates that more than 400,000 people have been killed and millions have fled their homes since the conflict began with anti-Assad protests.

A total of 3,498 civilians killed and 7,920 wounded in 2016, in part due to increase in ISIL attacks and air raids.

The UN said Afghan security forces caused about 20 percent of the overall casualties [EPA]

by Al Jazeera

Civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2016 were the highest recorded by the United Nations, the world body said, with nearly 11,500 non-combatants – one-third of them children – killed or wounded.

Fighting between Afghan security forces and armed groups, especially in populated areas, remained “the leading cause of civilian casualties” more than two years after NATO’s combat mission ended, said the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), which began documenting civilian casualties in 2009.

A total of 3,498 civilians were killed and 7,920 were wounded in 2016, a combined increase of three percent over the previous year, according to the annual report for 2016.

“Against a backdrop of protracted ground fighting, the battlefield permeated civilian sanctuaries that should be spared from harm, with suicide attacks in mosques; targeted attacks against district centres, bazaars and residential homes; and the use of schools and hospitals for military purposes,” the UN said.

Danielle Bell, the director of UNAMA’s human rights unit, called on the parties to the conflict to take stronger measures to mitigate harm on the battlefield.

“They should start making promises and ensure the commitments they made are translated into reality on the battlefield. This is the only thing that has to happen to prevent civilian causalities,” she told Al Jazeera.

About 61 percent of all civilian casualties were caused by armed groups like the Taliban and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).

The UN attributed at least 4,953 deaths and injuries to the Taliban, but in a shift for 2016, investigators documented a 10-fold increase in casualties caused by ISIL, which often targets members of the Shia Muslim minority.

At least 899 deaths and injuries were attributed to ISIL, which has previously been a relatively minor faction in Afghanistan, but last year launched an increasing number of suicide attacks.

Last year saw the highest number of civilian casualties from suicide attacks since the UN began tracking the numbers.

‘I ndiscriminate use of heavy weapons’

Afghan security forces caused about 20 percent of the overall casualties, while pro-government fighters and international forces caused two percent each.

Among the deadliest tactic used by government forces was the indiscriminate use of heavy weapons, such as mortars in populated areas, the UN said.

As the Afghan air force acquired more attack aircraft and the US ramped up its campaign against both ISIL and the Taliban, casualties in air raids increased 99 percent compared with 2015.

Air raids by international warplanes resulted in at least 127 civilian deaths and 108 injuries in 2016, while the Afghan air force accounted for at least 85 deaths and 167 injuries.

UN investigators were not able to attribute responsibility for 38 deaths and 65 injuries from air strikes.

US officials have only acknowledged possible civilian casualties in one incident in Kunduz province in November, when the UN said as many as 32 non-combatants were killed and 26 wounded in a joint US-Afghan raid.

Casualties among children spiked by 24 percent in 2016, with 923 dead and 2,589 wounded, largely as a result of a major increase in casualties from unexploded ordnance.