While the world debates on action regarding the Syrian civil war, people are dying and some other, well they survive, but not intact.
Torture is one of the Assad's dynasty preferred tactics. It has been so pervasive, that it has even found its way in literature. Syrian writers have written about it for decades. And evidence is hard to come as most who are tortured do not survive or do not tell.
But researchers for human rights groups are finally getting their hands on some photographic evidence.
The picture above shows a Syrian man after he was released by the Assad forces who was tortured in the city of Aleppo, during last summer.
Human Rights Watch has toured Raqa, in Syria's north, during April, and found some of the most incriminating evidence.
In fact, the human rights group was able to access the prison cells, documents, interrogation rooms and torture devices so that they had first hand view of the torture practice by the regime. Although many people had already related to the watchdog group of the practice at least orally, this new material sheds further light, and offers direct proof that it goes on.
One of the devices used was a cross shaped instrument called the 'flying carpet', a modernized version of the rack, where people in medieval times where strechted to the point of limb separation.
What is worse, the practice is still ongoing amidst the civil war. Many prisoners tell stories of hearing the searing screams that break through the prison walls. In some cases, when siblings were detained together, one of the siblings would be forced to hear the screams of his brother.
The area that Human rights Watch is travelling through now is called the "torture archipelago". In this area alone, tens of thousands of prisoners are believed to have been tortured or mistreated.
The Human Rights group has asked that the documentary evidence be safeguarded for future use. Without them, it will be impossible to bring the torturers to justice.
Source : France 24/5.17.13
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