Damascus – The Action Group
Fayez Abu Eid, director of the Action Group, revealed new and shocking information in a statement to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed regarding the situation of Palestinians inside the prisons of Bashar al-Assad’s regime after his fall on December 8. Abu Eid explained that documents found in the security branches of the former regime provide strong evidence that young Palestinians were subjected to arrest and murder in prisons, where they were secretly executed on charges related to participating in protests against the regime.
Abu Eid pointed out that these charges even included cases in which Palestinians were merely providing humanitarian or medical assistance to demonstrators or those in need, reflecting the extent of the repression and abuse to which these young men in particular were subjected.
He said, “The documents in our possession confirm that these violations were systematic and that the regime directly targeted Palestinians.” He added that this information opens a new important file on the violations and abuses witnessed in prisons during the years of the Syrian revolution, and confirms that the suffering was not limited to Syrians alone, but also included minorities and marginalized groups, especially Palestinians inside Syrian territory.
He explained that “after our statistics indicated 3,098 forcibly disappeared persons, the number rose after updating the data to 7,294 missing persons, of whom 560 were released, and 1,305 died under torture.”
He pointed out that the fate of approximately 5,300 forcibly disappeared persons remains unknown. He added that the failure to find detainees in the regime’s prisons unfortunately suggests that they were liquidated inside prisons, which brings the number of Palestinian victims in the Syrian conflict to more than 10,000 people, equivalent to 5.6% of the total Palestinians in Syria.
Abu Eid noted that the Action Group for Palestinians of Syria submitted 36 documents to the Human Rights Council, including 20 documents in which we demanded the detainees and forcibly disappeared persons, in addition to holding the former Syrian regime accountable.
He also called on the relevant human rights bodies and the Syrian state to reveal the fate of the forcibly disappeared and implement transitional justice on the same path for the rest of the Syrian detainees.