Syria has opened its main prison in Damascus to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the organization said, a move that could help reveal the fate of some of the thousands detained since the start of a five-month uprising.
The announcement came on Monday as forces and militiamen loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad killed at least 10 civilians across Syria in assaults to end pro-democracy protests and to stop refugees fleeing the bloodshed by crossing into Turkey, activists and residents said.
The Red Cross visits people in places of detention worldwide from Gaza to Guantanamo to assess their conditions of detention and treatment.
However, its confidential findings are shared only with the authorities concerned, which human rights activists warn could diminish the impact of the visits. Many people who have been rounded up or disappeared are being held in schools and factories that may be off-limits to the Red Cross, they said.
“We know that there are more than 15,000 detainees who are not in the formal prisons, among them five of my relatives,” said Radwan Ziadeh, a Washington-based Syrian exile and activist.
The Red Cross said its officials visited detainees in the central prison in the Damascus suburb of Adra in an “important step forward” to fulfill its humanitarian activities in Syria.
“The Syrian authorities have granted the ICRC access to a place of detention for the first time. Initially, we will have access to persons detained by the Ministry of the Interior and we are hopeful that we will soon be able to visit all detainees,” ICRC president Jakob Kellenberger said in a statement issued at the end of a two-day visit to Damascus.
Human rights campaigners said Syrian forces have arrested tens of thousands of people since the uprising demanding political freedom and an end to 41 years of Assad family rule erupted in March, with many being housed in security police buildings off-limits to the Red Cross.
They said a reported defection of the attorney general of the city of Hama, which was attacked by the military last month, could reveal details of human rights abuses, including shootings and torture of prisoners, which have intensified in the last month as protests spread.
A Syrian lawyer, who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals, said the Red Cross needed to have access to unofficial jails and detention centers to see torture chambers and the extent of human rights violations in the country.
“The Damascus central prison is mostly for criminal not political cases. The bulk of the ugliest torture takes place in the cellars of secret police branches spearheading the repression, such as Military Intelligence and Air Force Intelligence,” he said.
Syrian authorities have not revealed the number of detainees in the country, but they have previously denied torture allegations and said that any arrests were made in compliance with the Constitution.
Syrian forces on Monday launched their biggest sweep against popular unrest in Syria’s northwest near Turkey since June, killing a civilian in raids that have galvanized the West against Assad.
Nine other civilians were killed in assaults on the city of Homs and the surrounding countryside, where tanks were deployed four months ago after large protests demanding Assad’s removal.
Four employees of state-owned Syrian Petroleum Transport Co were also killed in Homs when unknown gunmen opened fire on a bus carrying them, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, headed by dissident in exile Rami Abdelrahman, said in a statement.
British Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament Assad had lost all legitimacy, joining the US, France and other European countries that have said he must leave for Syria to become a democracy after four decades of autocratic rule.
Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby will visit Syria today, Egypt’s news agency MENA reported on Monday. Elaraby had said the visit would be used to pass on Arab worries about the Syrian authorities’ violent crackdown on protests against Assad’s rule.
Protests again erupted in several large towns across southern Syria after evening prayers on Monday, activists and residents said, citing the towns of Hirak, Inkhil, Jeza, Museifra and Teba, where protesters numbering in the hundreds to thousands marched in anti-Assad demonstrations.
The frequency of protests in the countryside around Deraa have picked up in the last week since the end of Ramadan, according to residents who say they are no longer restricted to Fridays.
In Deraa, the cradle of the uprising, a heavy army and security presence made it more difficult for protesters to take to the streets, but residents reported several small demonstrations in some neighborhoods in which hundreds of youths took part.
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