Syria sees 687 arbitrary detentions in September: NGO

By Can Erozden

ANKARA (AA) - Some 687 cases of arbitrary detention were reported across war-torn Syria in September, a non-governmental organization said Wednesday.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said Syrian regime forces are responsible for 87 percent of the detentions.

The London-based NGO's report for September said that last month, Syrian regime forces arbitrarily detained 402 people, including 22 children and 34 women.

It said the YPG/PKK terrorist organization detained 190 people, including four children and six women, without any reason in the regions they invaded last month while the Daesh terrorist group arbitrarily detained 22 individuals, including two children, in September.

The militant group Hay’at Tahrir al Sham detained 35 men, while factions from the armed opposition detained 38 individuals, including one child and two women.

The report also said that from January to September, 6,109 people faced arbitrary detention across Syria.

In its more than 30-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK -- listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU -- has been responsible for the deaths of nearly 40,000 people, including women and children. The YPG is the terror group's Syrian branch.

"In most cases, victims’ families can’t accurately identify the entity that made the arrest, considering that all of the forces that sided with the Syrian regime [Iranian militias, the Lebanese group Hezbollah and others], aside from the four main security agencies and their many branches, have the authority to arrest, torture and commit the crime of enforced disappearance," the SNHR said in its report.

It added that despite all the negotiations, agreements and statements on the cessation of hostilities in Syria, no positive steps have been taken regarding ending arbitrary detentions and forcible disappearances in the country.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity. This led to a military conflict between Syrian opposition groups and the regime over the country’s territory.

Iran has been supporting the Assad regime during the war while Russia intervened in September 2015. Peace talks were launched in Geneva in 2012 aimed at finding a political solution to the conflict while talks in the Kazakh capital of Astana that began in 2017 resulted in a cease-fire that has been fragile so far.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed in the conflict mainly by regime airstrikes targeting opposition-held areas while millions more were displaced. The Assad regime has also been accused many times by various international actors of targeting Syrian civilians with chemical weapons.