Syrian authorities have released around 60 detainees since Sunday May 1, under a new amnesty decree considered the most comprehensive since the start of the conflict in 2011.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had already announced several amnesties since the start of the war in 2011, which included many exceptions. The previous one dated back to May 2021, a few weeks before his re-election for a fourth term. A new one started on Sunday May 1st.
” More than 60 detainees have been released since Sunday in several Syrian regions, including some who spent at least ten years in the regime’s prisons, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) said on Monday. The decree provides: to grant a general amnesty for terrorist crimes committed by Syrians “before April 30, 2022, “ with the exception of those having caused the death of a human being and those provided for by the anti-terrorism law “, said Saturday the Syrian presidency on social networks.
This new decree, published on Saturday, two days before the Eid al-Fitr celebration – which celebrates the end of Ramadan – is considered by human rights activists to be the most comprehensive. According to the director of the OSDH, Rami Abdel Rahmane, ” tens of thousands of detainees are eligible, many of whom are charged with crimes related to the “terrorism “. Rami Abdel Rahman calls this accusation ” vague ” for ” convict detainees arbitrarily arrested “.
Lawyer Nora Ghazi, director of the organization No Photo Zone, which provides legal assistance to detainees, the disappeared and their families, considered that this decree had the framework ” the widest since the beginning of the Syrian revolution “. ” Many people are expected, but it will take a long time “, she says.
According to a list of 20 names circulated by social media activists of detainees who spent years in Sednaya prison, whom Amnesty International called ” human slaughterhouse are among the released prisoners. Since the beginning of the conflict, nearly half a million people have entered the regime’s prisons and more than 100,000 of them have died under torture or as a result of appalling conditions of detention, according to the OSDH .
The Syrian regime is also accused of torture in prisons, rape and sexual assault, as well as extrajudicial executions.
(With AFP)