August 18, 2016

Report highlights how sexual violence is used as torture in Syrian prisons

Amnesty International released a report today documenting how torture is a “routine occurrence” within detention facilities. Included among the acts of torture is sexual violence, where evidence shows how women at so-called “welcome parties” and “security checks” are raped and sexually assaulted by male guards.

In order to get information or “confessions” from detainees, the guards apply various torture techniques, including threats of rape and sexual violence. According to the report, sexual violence is used systematically against both male and female detainees. Men, for example, described to Amnesty researchers how beatings directed at the sexual organs or being raped with objects, such as a stick, were used. One detainee described how on one occasion, a guard forced two men to strip naked and ordered one to rape the other, threatening that if he did not do it he would die. Furthermore, approximately half of the women experienced “invasive security checks.”