Politics

Kurdish individual tortured to death by Syrian government: human rights organization

A Kurdish citizen from Afrin was allegedly killed under brutal torture after spending 7 months in the prisons of the Syrian government.

Wladimir van Wilgenburg 2023/08/21 11:25

More than 200,000 people are thought to have spent time in Syrian government prisons since 2011 (Photo: AFP)

Syria Afrin Syrian government Missing persons

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A Kurdish citizen from Afrin was allegedly killed under brutal torture after spending 7 months in the prisons of the Syrian government.

The Human Rights Organization in Afrin announced that a citizen named Mustafa Sheikho Bekir from the village of Coq in the Afrin region died on Aug. 15, 2023 in a Damascus prison after succumbing to brutal torture by Syrian government forces.

The organization also announced that the security authorities forced the family of Mustafa Shekho Bekir to bury his body in a cemetery in the town of Qatana in the countryside of Damascus.

According to the information of that human rights organization, Mustafa Sheikho Bekir (55 years old), who had been living in the village of Jarcir in Qalamoun area in the north of Damascus for more than a year, was detained in Damascus on Feb. 1, 2023 along with his mother.

His mother was freed against 30 million Syrian pounds and she was taken to security centers, but Bekir was never released.

During the Syrian crisis, Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations have accused Syrian President Bashar Assad and his government of killing and "systematically torturing" his opponents in prisons.

According to the statistics of the Syrian Network of Human Rights, the Syrian government is still holding approximately 135,253 detainees (and forcibly disappeared persons).

Furthermore, a report of the Netherlands-based International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) suggests that since 2020, 100,000 persons have gone missing in Syria since the start of the 2011 uprising, including Kurds arrested by Damascus.

The UN General Assembly in June created the Independent Institution on Missing Persons in Syria to investigate the fate of thousands who have disappeared in Syria since civil war broke out in 2011, despite objections from Damascus.

The Kurdish National Council in Syria welcomed this step, and stressed the importance of finding those who are in the hands of the Syrian government and those who have been abducted by other factions as well.

The resolution was condemned by the Syrian government, which underlined that Syria “has processed all claims on a national basis and has conducted independent investigations based on Syrian law."