ICC Note: The United Nations (UN) Committee tasked with investigating human rights violations in Syria released a report showing the horrific details against all detainees held by radical groups, in addition to ISIS.  Al Nusra is one such group that claims the banner of “anti-Assad” opposition, but practices tactics that are just as dangerous to the civilians in Syria that stand in their way. The 25 page UN report outlines some of the more heinous acts against civilians in Syria, including Christians, from both sides of the war.

02/09/2016 Syria (RT) – Parties to the Syrian conflict, including anti-government armed groups, as well as Al-Nusra Front and Islamic State, have committed “serious violations” of the rights of detainees, including torture and killing, according to United Nations investigators.

The 25-page report, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Deaths in Detention,” covers from the beginning of the conflict in March 2011 until last November. It is based on 621 interviews, more than 200 of which were with former detainees who witnessed one or more deaths in custody.

According to the special UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria, anti-government armed groups and Al-Nusra fighters are“responsible for murder, torture and other forms of ill treatment of detainees.” The report states that in instituting makeshift courts, whose procedures fall far short of fair trial standards, the responsible groups have breached “due process principles, in violation of international humanitarian and human rights law,” while “executions ordered by these makeshift, unauthorized courts constitute killings or summary executions in violation of international humanitarian law and human rights law.”

Al-Nusra Front set up detention facilities in the city of Idlib, in northwest Syria, where deaths in detention have been documented, according to the report. In February 2015, the terrorist group returned the body of a civilian detained by the fighters for a few days in Maaret Misreen, some 50km southwest of Aleppo, and later acknowledged that the victim died as a consequence of torture.

In late April 2015, Al-Nusra held civilian men and women, as well as captured government soldiers, in the Harim prison in Idlib. Two women held in Harim prison described women and children being separated from their male relatives and being held in “squalid conditions, with little food. They were forced to pray.” The former detainees described hearing “men screaming while being beaten by members of Al-Nusra.” They also allegedly heard government soldiers being brought into the prison and “pleading for their lives before being executed by shooting.”

In Homs, Idlib and Dara’a governorates, Al-Nusra Front and local anti-government armed groups have either jointly set up makeshift Sharia courts or agreed to support the existing courts, the Commission stated, adding that the “operation of these courts does not abide by fair trial standards. Where they jointly operate, they pursue similar practices in terms of arrest, detention and ill treatment of detainees, including numerous cases of summary executions of prisoners.”

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