Human Rights Watch: Former detainees and defectors have identified the locations, agencies responsible, torture methods used, and, in many cases, the commanders in charge of 27 detention facilities run by Syrian intelligence agencies, Human Rights Watch said in a multimedia report released today. The systematic patterns of ill-treatment and torture that Human Rights Watch documented clearly point to a state policy of torture and ill-treatment and therefore constitute a crime against humanity.
The 81-page report, “Torture Archipelago: Arbitrary Arrests, Torture and Enforced Disappearances in Syria’s Underground Prisons since March 2011” is based on more than 200 interviews conducted by Human Rights Watch since the beginning of anti-government demonstrations in Syria in March 2011. The report includes maps locating the detention facilities, video accounts from former detainees, and sketches of torture techniques described by numerous people who witnessed or experienced torture in these facilities.
“The intelligence agencies are running an archipelago of torture centers scattered across the country,” said Ole Solvang, emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. “By publishing their locations, describing the torture methods, and identifying those in charge we are putting those responsible on notice that they will have to answer for these horrific crimes.”
Click to view in-depth, satellite images of the torture centers in the following cities: Damascus, Homs, Idlib, Aleppo, Daraa, and Latakia.
RE – “Syria: Torture centers revealed by Human Rights Watch”
MY COMMENT: Correct me if I’m wrong, but not so long ago the U.S. was using “extraordinary rendition” to send “detainees” to Syria knowing full well that they would be tortured. . . Oops, I mean subjected to “enhanced procedures”.
This is not to say that two wrongs make a right, but sometimes two wrongs do expose hypocrisy.
Since we know that the Bush administration used torture (and that the Obama administration banned torture only to replace it with assassination) and that the CIA outsourced torture to “professionals” such as the Syrians, does that mean that we should now have a kind of normalized view of torture? We think it’s bad but everyone does it, so what is there to condemn?
I have a different perspective. If we’re going to condemn Americans using torture, then we should likewise condemn anyone else’s use of torture. Or should we just pay attention to the hypocrisy of our own government and forget about what’s happening in Syria?