Syria has opened its main prison in Damascus
to the Red Cross, 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 President Bashar al-Assad killed at
least 10 civilians across Syria on Monday in assaults to end pro-democracy
protests and to stop refugees fleeing the bloodshed from crossing to Turkey, activists and residents said.
The ICRC visits people in
places of detention worldwide from Gaza to Guantanamo to assess their
conditions of detention and treatment.
But 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 which may be
off-limits to the ICRC, they add.
"We know that there are
more than 15,000 detainees who are not in the formal prisons, among them five
of my relatives," Radwan Ziadeh, a Washington-based Syrian exile and
activist, told Reuters.
The International Committee of
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 say
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
ICRC, whose reports are not public.
They say 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.
UNOFFICIAL JAILS
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 do not reveal
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 launched on
Monday 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 President Bashar al-Assad.
Nine other civilians were
killed in assaults on the city of Homs and its countryside, where tanks
deployed four months ago after large protests demanding Assad's removal.
Four employees of the
state-owned Syrian Petroleum Transport Company where 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,
added in statement.
British Prime Minister David
Cameron told parliament Assad had lost all legitimacy, joining the United
States, 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 on Wednesday, 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.
Frequency of protests in the
countryside around Deraa have picked up this last week since the end of
Ramadan, according to residents who say no longer restricted to Fridays as
before.
In Deraa city, cradle of the
uprising, heavy army and security presence made it more difficult for
protesters to take to the streets but residents reported several smaller
demonstrations in some neighborhoods in which hundreds of youths took part,
they said.
FLEEING TO TURKEY
In the northwestern province
of Idlib, Adelsalam Hassoun, 24, a blacksmith, was killed by army snipers on
Monday just after he had crossed into Turkey from the village of Ain al-Baida
on the Syrian side, his cousin told Reuters by telephone from Syria.
"Abdelsalam was hit in
the head. He was among a group of family members and other refugees who dashed
across the plain to Turkey when six armored personnel carrier deployed outside
Ain al-Baida and started firing their machineguns into the village at random
this morning," Mohammad Hassoun said
Thousands of families fled
their homes in the northern border region in June when troops assaulted town
and villages that had seen big protests against Assad.
Faced with a heavy security
presence in central neighborhoods of Damascus and Aleppo, and military assaults
against a swathe of cities from Latakia on the coast to Deir al-Zor in the
East, street rallies calling for an end to the Assad family's domination of
Syria have intensified in towns and villages across the country of 20 million.
Demonstrators have been
encouraged by the fall of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and growing international
pressure on Assad. The European Union has imposed an embargo on Syrian oil
exports, jeopardizing a major source of revenue for Assad, who inherited power
from his father, the late Hafez al-Assad, in 2000.
"Economic pressure will
be key in swaying the merchant class toward the side of the uprising, but Assad
will keep adopting the military solution and deploying heavy weapons across Syria,"
said Syrian dissident in exile Bassam al-Bitar.
"International
intervention, something akin to a no-fly zone, will still be needed to protect
protests and encourage more members of the army to defect," Bitar, a
former diplomat, told Reuters from Washington.
(Additional reporting by
Suleiman al-Khalidi, Adrian Croft in London and Mahmoud Habbous in
Dubai,; Editing by Michael Roddy)
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Source : Reuters
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