547 detainees died in Syrian regime prisons in 2022: NGO

ANKARA

A total of 547 detainees have died in the Syrian regime’s detention centers in 2022, according to a UK-based human rights group on Tuesday.

“The Syrian regime has registered thousands of forcibly disappeared persons as dead, including prominent activists from the popular uprising against its rule,” the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said in a report.

The rights group said that it has received approximately 1,062 death certificates between 2018 and 2021.

“Since the beginning of 2022, we have obtained 547 new death certificates,” it said. “The new batch of certificates, however, stands out because they were obtained from sources within the Syrian regime and have not been published by the regime’s civil register offices.”

According to the SNHR, 1,609 individuals forcibly disappeared in the regime’s detention centers between early 2018 and November 2022 have been registered as dead, including 24 children, 21 women and 16 medics.

Opposition sources claim that at least 500,000 people are currently detained in the regime's prisons and interrogation centers.

Syria has been ravaged by a civil war since early 2011 when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protesters.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced, according to UN estimates.

*Ikram Imane Kouachi contributed to this report