Beatings, electric shocks, sexist violence, forced disappearances, confinement of minors, mass deaths. The organization in defense of human rights Amnesty International (AI), with headquarters in London, denounces this Wednesday the mistreatment and torture suffered by thousands of detainees linked to the Islamic State (ISIS) in the camps and centers managed by the Kurdish authorities in Syria. According to data collected for the report The consequences: injustice, torture and death in custody in northeast Syria, More than 56,000 people are still locked up in 27 detention centers and two open-air camps (Al Hol and Al Roj) under the control of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) and its militias. associated. Most of the inmates in these facilities come from what ISIS called the caliphate, established in parts of the territory between Syria and Iraq in June 2014. Five years after that fundamentalist and terrorist project, the group fell militarily in battle of Baguz, on the Syrian-Iraqi border, against a coalition of Arab and Kurdish militiamen with support from the United States.
Based on three trips made by the organization's researchers between September 2022 and August 2023, during which they conducted 314 interviews with prisoners, officials and representatives of the United Nations, the report concludes that the detainees “are subject to human rights violations.” systematic.” The report also denounces the death of many of them “due to the inhumane conditions” in the detention centers. Amnesty also accuses the United States of playing a “fundamental role” in the “creation and maintenance of this repressive system.”
A few weeks after the proclamation of the caliphate, in September 2014, Barack Obama gave the green light to the first bombings against ISIS positions. With military support from Washington, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), made up of Arab and Kurdish militiamen, fought the jihadist group, then led by the Iraqi Abubaker al Baghdadi, until their defeat in Baguz, in March 2019. After this battle , thousands of people linked to ISIS or residents of the region under its control were held in camps and detention centers. The AANES is the political entity that governs this part of northern Syria, while the SDF and other related armed groups are in charge of security. However, the United States continues to monitor everything related to prisoners linked to ISIS, including with personnel on the ground who have interrogated and identified the prisoners. It is for this reason that Amnesty grants it a fundamental role in human rights violations.
“The US government has helped establish and expand a largely illegal detention system,” says AI Secretary General Agnès Callamard, “characterized by systemic inhumane and degrading conditions, unlawful killings and the widespread use of of torture.” The x-ray provided by the Amnesty report allows us to update the state of the situation for these thousands of prisoners, five years after the caliphate project knelt — ISIS cells remain operational in eastern Syria. Most of the inmates, 46,000, are locked up between the Al Hol and Al Roj camps, on the northeast corner that leads to the Iraqi border. In this case, 94% would be women and children with more or less relationship with the jihadist fighters. A 30-year-old woman identified as Layla – her real name is withheld for security reasons – says: “Life here is a slow and painful death.” Amnesty denounces “high levels” of sexist violence in the camps perpetrated by ISIS affiliates who can access their interior, as well as the existence of sexual exploitation organized by security forces and individuals.
“There was no specific day or time, nor a specific form of torture (…). The worst was when they entered the room (…) with plastic pipes, cables and steel tubes and hit us all over our bodies,” says the story of Yusuf – not his real name -, one of those interviewed by Amnesty in the Sini detention center, located in the town of Al Shadadi, in the eastern province of Hasaka. Fellow sufferer, Abbas, told one of the investigators: “We already know the Americans, they come with their weapons and their dogs (…). They searched the prison, searched us and our rooms (…). They could see the blood on the wall. “They could see people with torture wounds.” Another of the testimonies collected in Sini puts the number of inmates he saw dying in his cell at 17 after the authorities turned off the air extractor.
Between the Sini center and the Panorama center, also located in Hasaka, Amnesty interviewed 48 detainees, including men, women, boys and girls. Through their testimonies, the organization concludes that the inmates were subjected to torture to obtain forced confessions. In the case of the Panorama dungeons, which are said to have no access to food or medical care, the organization was also able to document the existence of a serious tuberculosis outbreak that had been going on for years—in August 2023, the SDF admitted to AI itself that one or two men or children died every week from this disease.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
Subscribe
The report also estimates that there are a thousand minors, including Syrians and foreigners, held in detention centers. As relatives of children locked up in the Al Roj camps have told El PAÍS, the Kurdish authorities at their discretion separate the children from their mothers when they are around 13 years of age to take them to facilities—the AANES calls them “rehabilitation centers”—in which they can suffer the same abuse as adults. Some of them are transferred to these centers for their alleged links with ISIS, although Amnesty research states that only one in 10 has been accused of a crime.
Repatriations
Among all those detained there are Syrians, Iraqis, but also citizens of 74 other countries. In January 2023, the Spanish Government repatriated two women and 13 Spanish minors from the Al Roj camp. Five years after the defeat of ISIS, there are thousands of foreigners who have not yet been claimed by their countries of origin. Amnesty has shared the conclusions of its report with the Kurdish authorities and the Joe Biden Administration. Both express the need for States to repatriate their nationals, in a humanitarian and security context that they call “difficult.” Among those still locked up in the Al Hol camp, the largest, is the Ceuta-born Spaniard Lubna Miludi, along with her eight-year-old son.
The report also denounces the practice of torture and ill-treatment to obtain confessions during the judicial processes carried out by the special Kurdish courts during these years. According to AANES, more than 96,000 people have been tried, most of them Syrian nationals, with alleged links to ISIS. Amnesty was able to document at least 18 cases in which this relationship with the jihadist group was false. The agreement between Washington, the Kurdish authorities and those of Iraq has allowed hundreds of Iraqis imprisoned in northeastern Syria to be transferred across the border to be tried. The organization, as it has done in previous investigations, accuses the Iraqi justice system of sentencing, including the death penalty, based on torture and ill-treatment.
Follow all the international information on Facebook and xor in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#Amnesty #accuses #collaborating #system #torture #illtreatment #detention #camps #Syria