ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – More than 60,000 people have died of torture or poor humanitarian conditions inside jails or detention centers controlled by the Syrian regime since the beginning of the war five years ago, a monitoring group said. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said Saturday that the figure was based on "confirmed information from reliable sources within the regime's security branches, most importantly Air Force Intelligence and State Security, in addition to reliable sources in Sednaya military prison." These sources, it said, "reported that at least 60 thousand prisoners died within these branches and Sednaya prison during the five past years, either due to direct physical torture, or by privation of food and medicine." The Observatory also found that in many cases the regime authority made families of the victims sign statements which claimed that "their sons were killed by the fighters of the opposition groups." In other cases families of victims kept these murders "secret, out of fear of security prosecution and arrest." In light of these large-scale abuses the Syrian Observatory made an open call for the international community and the United Nations to take "immediate action by putting pressure on the Syrian regime, in order to release the remaining alive detainees," and to establish a "court to prosecute these torturers criminals killers and those who command them." The Observatory also said that "those who have killed so many of the Syrian people," have "zero humanity in their hearts and their consciences."
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