Report: Syria's Assad has secretly executed up to 13,000 civilians at a single prison since 2011

Amnesty International accuses Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of mass murder
(Image credit: AFP/Getty Images)

United Nations investigators determined a year ago that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government has been "exterminating" thousands of civilian detainees in the country's civil war, and in August, Amnesty International put a number on those extrajudicial deaths, estimating that at least 17,732 detainees at the Saydnaya military prison and other government facilities died from regular beatings, torture, and depravation from 2011 through 2015. On Tuesday, Amnesty International reported that another 5,000 to 13,000 detainees at Saydnaya prison alone were hanged in groups of 20 to 50 once or twice a week during that same period, secretly and in the dead of night.

Amnesty said it based its report on 84 first-hand accounts from former Saydnaya detainees, guards, and officials, plus judges, lawyers, and experts on detention in Syria. According to the accounts, the detainees — most of them civilians suspected of peacefully supporting the opposition — were taken from their cells and told they were being transferred to a civilian jail, then brought to a basement and beaten for two to three hours, transferred to a different part of Saydnaya, located outside Damascus, then given 2-3 minute "trials" before "military field courts," where false confessions produced under torture would lead to death sentences. The grand mufti and Syria's defense minister or army chief of staff must approve the death sentences, Amnesty says.

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.