U.N. report: Syrian government is 'exterminating' detainees

A new United Nations report by the Commission of Inquiry on Syria found that the Syrian government is executing civilian detainees on a massive scale, in addition to killing and torturing Islamic State and Nusra Front prisoners.

The commission is calling on the U.N. Security Council to impose "targeted sanctions" against high-ranking civilian and military officials, Reuters reports. "Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Deaths in Detention" covers March 10, 2011, to Nov. 30, 2015, with interviews from 621 witnesses and survivors. Thousands of people, mostly civilian men, have been killed, tortured, starved, and denied medical treatment, and commission chairman Paulo Pinheiro said "prison officials, their superiors throughout the hierarchy, high-ranking officials in military hospitals, and the military police corps as well as government were aware that deaths on a massive scale were occurring. Thus we concluded there were reasonable grounds... to believe that the conduct described amounts to extermination as a crime against humanity."

Investigators repeatedly asked for access to detention facilities, but were denied. The high-ranking officers are "individually criminally liable," investigators said, and a list of suspected war criminals from all sides and units is kept in a U.N. safe in Geneva. Raneem Matouq, the daughter of a prominent attorney who went missing in 2012, says she was held in a Damascus facility after peacefully protesting as a student. She described the conditions there as deplorable: There was hardly any food, the prison was infested with insects, detainees could only use an outdoor toilet three times a day, and there were dead bodies in different areas.

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