ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Methods of torture and forced confessions common under the ousted Bashar al-Assad administration persist under Syria’s new leadership, according to a report published Friday by Paris-based watchdog, Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ).
The group’s expanded investigation cites “19 testimonies from survivors of detention and torture, relatives of people who died or went missing in custody, and eyewitnesses,” detailing severe beatings, electric shocks, and deaths in custody within the country’s current security and military apparatus.
“One year later, the testimonies examined in this expanded investigation indicate that those incidents were not merely abuses confined to the first months of the transitional period,” the report reads, maintaining that “removing an authority that had used torture on a vast scale did not automatically end the practice or dismantle the conditions that enable it.”
The ousted regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad collapsed on December 8, 2024, ending 53 years of Baathist family rule following an 11-day offensive led by the opposition group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
Human rights organizations have long documented systematic torture and brutality as defining features of Assad's regime, citing the presence of mass graves - most notably at the notorious Sednaya prison just north of Damascus, widely dubbed “the house of horrors.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated in January 2021 that 30,000 detainees were killed by the Assad regime in Sednaya through torture, ill-treatment, and mass executions since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war. Tens of thousands of prisoners were freed from Sednaya and other facilities across the country following the regime's collapse.
However, the STJ report asserts that more than a year and a half after the fall of the Assad regime and the opening of prisons long associated with enforced disappearances, ill-treatment in Syria has not ceased.
“Survivors described being punched and kicked and beaten with cables, sticks, plastic pipes, and rifle butts; subjected to electric shocks until they lost consciousness; threatened with death or execution; subjected to mock executions; partially stripped; and forced into degrading positions,” the report detailed.
Witnesses described “being held in severely overcrowded cells lacking ventilation and hygiene and being denied adequate food, water, bathing facilities, and medical care. In some cases, these conditions caused or contributed to serious illnesses whose effects persisted after release.”
The testimonies obtained by STJ show that “torture was not confined to interrogation rooms; in several cases, it began at the moment of arrest,” where “individuals were beaten at checkpoints and in the streets before being informed of the reasons for their detention” and “without their arrest being clearly recorded or their families being told where they were held.”
The STJ framed the violations as the reflection of “a broader problem,” calling for the rejection of two reductive approaches: treating every incident as an isolated individual act and presuming the existence of a single centralized system equivalent in structure and direction to “the torture apparatus entrenched by the Assad regime.”
“The available material reveals a more complex reality: actors and facilities vary, but victims described similar methods and encountered the same absence of safeguards,” the report noted.
The watchdog says the investigation is by no means exhaustive but serves to highlight “recurring practices and the institutional and security environments that allowed them to persist.”
Emphasizing the presence of lingering remnants of the Assad era, the report stated that “the violations were not limited to facilities controlled by the transitional government.”
Human rights reports and testimonies collected by STJ have also documented torture, ill-treatment, and deaths in custody in areas controlled by the Autonomous Administration, as well as violations committed “by factions, local formations, and armed forces in Afrin, Suwayda, and elsewhere.”
In one example, the report highlights the severe beating of two men at a checkpoint before interrogators even attempted to extract information.
"They accused us of belonging to the Kurdistan Workers' Party,” said "Salah," a man driving from Damascus to the northeastern Kurdish-majority region (Rojava) of Hasaka.
“They did not believe our denials and claimed that we should have left the area and fled. We tried to explain that we were citizens with families and relatives and could not simply leave our homes. But they beat us without mercy, as though we were their enemies. Their words were full of hatred and spite, and they directed extremely abusive insults at us."
Salah, who was detained with his companion at the same checkpoint, reported that “a single dish of yoghurt was provided for seven detainees” during his prolonged confinement, during which “neither man was brought before a judge, informed of any specific legal charge, or allowed to contact a lawyer or his family.”
The report recounts that the men were later released “following the intervention of intermediaries and warned not to return to [Syrian Democratic Forces] SDF-controlled areas.”
This account “illustrates one direct consequence of torture during interrogation: it does not necessarily elicit the truth, but may drive detainees to repeat what they believe their interrogators want to hear,” the report stated. “Statements extracted in this way therefore have no probative value and cannot be regarded as voluntary or reliable confessions.”
Salah’s account is one of 14 cases documented between June 2025 and June 2026 - supported by official statements, human rights and media reports, and open-source material - highlighting instances where torture was used to extract information or confessions, and for purposes of punishment, intimidation, coercion or discrimination.
STJ concluded its report with a call to secure justice and reparations for survivors and “hold both direct perpetrators and persons in positions of command accountable,” an oversight feature absent under the Assad regime.
“Ending torture requires subjecting all detaining authorities to uniform rules and rigorous independent oversight, and ensuring detainees’ access to their families, lawyers, courts, and doctors from the outset,” STJ emphasized.
“The change in political authority has not yet been accompanied by the effective dismantling of the structures and practices that enable torture,” the report stated.
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