(Damascus) The Syrian regime burned the bodies of “thousands” of
prisoners in a giant crematorium at its most notorious jail in an effort to
hide the scale of its killings, according to Stuart Jones, the acting assistant
secretary for the State Department Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs who gave a press briefing in Washington:
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Acting Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Stuart Jones briefs the press on the situation in #Syria. pic.twitter.com/atXOkJp1BG— Department of State (@StateDept) May 15, 2017
"The regime continues to systematically abduct and torture civilian detainees, often beating, electrocuting, and raping these victims. A former regime photo-documentarian working under the name Caesar has shared more than 10,000 photos of Assad’s victims with the international community. According to numerous NGOs, the regime has abducted and detained between 65,000 and 117,000 people between 2011 and 2015.. The regime holds as many as 70 prisoners in Saydnaya in cells that have a five-person capacity. And according to multiple sources, the regime is responsible for killing as many as 50 detainees per day at Saydnaya. Credible sources have believed that many of the bodies have been disposed in mass graves. We now believe that the Syrian regime has installed a crematorium in the Saydnaya prison complex which could dispose of detainees’ remains with little evidence. Beginning in 2013, the Syrian regime modified a building within the Saydnaya complex to support what we believe is a crematorium, as shown in the photos that we have distributed to you. Although the regime’s many atrocities are well documented, we believe that the building of a crematorium is an effort to cover up the extent of mass murders taking place in Saydnaya prison."
The State department also released photographs showing what it
said was a outhouse in the prison complex that they believed was modified in
2013 to support the crematorium.
In February Amnesty international claimed that as many as
13,000 people, most of them civilian opposition supporters, have been executed
in secret at Saydnaya prison
