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Syria's Disappeared

Syrians who have endured years of imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Assad regime are sometimes getting picked up again by opposition groups who learned their cruelty from the masters. The lucky ones are eventually released with traumatic stories to tell but thousands simply disappear. Today, we hear from those who refuse to give up on them....
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The Current22:00Syria Disappeared - Nov 26, 2014
Syrians who have endured years of imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Assad regime are sometimes getting picked up again by opposition groups who learned their cruelty from the masters. The lucky ones are eventually released with traumatic stories to tell but thousands simply disappear. Today, we hear from those who refuse to give up on them.

The people who are paying the price are the civilians,They could be detained and tortured by either side, simply because they come from the wrong area at the wrong time.Nadim Khoury, Human Rights Watch

The beheadings of western aid workers in Syria traumatized many outsiders shocked by the cruelties of the country's four-and-a-half-year-old civil war. But as troubling as the killings are, the most common and insidious threat is far less sensational.

Human rights groups estimate as many as 200-thousand people have been imprisoned since the uprising started. Many have yet to be charged. Due process is a mirage. Torture is assumed. And many abductees simply vanish.

Yassin Saleh has gone into exile in Turkey too. He is a prominent Syrian writer. His wife, a well-known human rights activist named Samira al-Khalil, was taken last December along with three of her colleagues. They haven't been heard from since. Yassin Saleh was in Istanbul.

Ever since the uprising against Bashar al-Assad began, The Syrian Violations Documentation Center has gathered and verified stories of human rights abuses.

Nadim Houry is the Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa with Human Rights Watch. He contributed to a report released in 2012 called The Torture Archipelago: Arbitrary Arrests, Torture, and Enforced Disappearances in Syria's Underground Prisons since March 2011. Nadim Houry was in Beirut.


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This segment was produced by The Current's Gord Westmacott.

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