The AGPS expressed fears about the possibility of increasing the numbers of victims of torture and enforced disappearance of the Palestinian refugees, due to the large number of Palestinian detainees in the Syrian Regime’s prisons. The group has been able to document (791) Palestinian prisoners in Syria till 19th of March, as it is likely to be greater than that especially in light of the loss of any official information about the detainees, and the entire absence of any kind of trials.
The Group renewed its demand for the Syrian regime to disclose the fate of the Palestinian Syrian detainees, to work for their release, and to stop the crime of systematic killings of refugees and prisoners, demanding to be treated according to international laws and norms.
The group also stressed the need for the Syrian branches and prisons to declare the names of the detained refugees, considering that to hide that information is a crime of “forced disappearance” against the detainees.
The group appealed to all international parties and human rights organizations especially the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), official and civil Palestinian, and Arab institutions to intervene to determine the fate of the rest of the Palestinian prisoners in the prisons of the Syrian regime.
It is worth mentioning that the group’s fears came in conjunction with the published report of “Pictures’ Massacre,” which documents the victims of torture and enforced disappearance of Palestinian refugees who were identified through the leaked photos that were published earlier this month.
According to the report, serious events occurred about the issue of torture and enforced disappearance victims who mostly sits in the Syrian regime’s prisons, where nearly (6500) leaked pictures were published in the beginning of March 2015.
The report confirms “that the images were shocking and cruel, especially to the victims’ families who had some hope to meet their detained relatives after they disappeared in the darkness of the prison for periods of at least a year, which included pictures of torture victims who were arrested before August 2013, as the pictures were launched by a witness who became known as ” Tsar” who leaked the pictures to the UN.
The report indicates that among the thousands of those images, 39 bodies have been identified of Palestinian refugees who disappeared without knowing where they are, or who have been arrested by the branches of the Syrian security. This number is only for those who were identified till 19th of March and it is likely that the number will increase where the search is still going on between the images.
The report noted that “the monitoring and documentation team in the group was able to identify the owners of the pictures through communication with a large number of sources, including the detainees’ families and friends, and a number of Syrian human rights bodies, which took over publication of the images on their sites.”
The report also includes a list of names of victims who have been identified through those leaks, but there are a number of images will not be published on this report upon the request of their families.
In addition to the most prominent notes that the monitoring and documentation team in the group write it down during the search process, which gives the perception of how torture of detainees, which could be described as a murder systematically practiced against the detainees.