SJAC discloses web of ISIS prisons in Syria
DAMASCUS, Syria (North Press) – Syrian Justice Accountability Centre (SJAC) documented, in a report, for the first time, Thursday, the vast web of detention facilities that the Islamic State Organization (ISIS) used as disappearance centers.
In this report SJAC noted that ISIS violations “may constitute crimes against humanity, war crimes, and even genocide in some cases.”
The report titled “Unearthing Hope: The search for the missing victims of ISIS”, and said approximately 6,000 bodies have been exhumed from dozens of mass graves created by ISIS in northeast Syria.
Different wings of the ISIS security apparatus systematically used this network of more than 152 as police stations, training camps, and secret security prisons to detain kidnapped civilians and members of rival armed groups, the report added.
In some cases, many people were killed even before issuing death sentences or summarily executing them by the newly established regulatory bodies, as sentences were carried out in summary procedures, according to the report.
The SJAC included in its report 33 detention centers in the city of Raqqa alone.
The center revealed in this report that some of the perpetrators are still alive in the prisons of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and have the ability to identify the remains of the victims, while others have returned to their countries of origin after the end of the war in Syria and Iraq.
SJAC mentioned three main types of detention centers, which are the Hisba Centers, which were the most prevalent, given that they included people who committed minor offenses according to the organization, such as smoking or uttering obscene words, and Islamic Police Centers in which people were imprisoned, against whom the civil and criminal law of ISIS was applied, the report read.
As for the third main center that the missing have gone through, it is the Security Prisons.
Security prisons were used to hold detainees whom the organization considered to be of political importance or who pose a threat to it.
SJAC documented 21 security centers in Aleppo, Raqqa, Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor.