Assad regime 'executes 131 detainees infected with the plague'

An opposition group reports that Syrian government jailers executed 131 inmates in Damascus prison who had contracted the plague

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad Photo: JOSEPH EID/AFP

By Ruth Sherlock

6:45PM GMT 04 Dec 2014

Syrian government jailers have executed 131 inmates in a Damascus prison who had contracted the plague, it was reported on Thursday.

Conditions in the 215 Security Branch detention centre in the Syrian capital were so dire that pulmonary plague was spreading through the detainees. In September of this year, the officer in charge of the prison ordered the executions of inmates in dormitory number eight, according to an opposition group called the Syrian Association, which documents human rights violations. 

Up to 117 people were killed in the first round of mass killings, with a further 14 killed two days later, the group said.

The bodies were then reportedly wrapped in nylon bags before being transferred to a mass grave near a military housing complex nearby.

Human Rights Watch said it did not have proof of this massacre, but that other deaths in this detention facility have been well documented, including reports from former detainees reflecting mass killings.

The Syrian Commission for Transitional Justice, an opposition body, has released a report that documents up to "60,000" cases of "forced disappearances" in Syria since the start of the country's civil war.

Nasr al-Hariri, the Secretary General of the Syrian Coalition, the main political opposition body, called on the international community and human rights organisations to "put an end to the grave violations and crimes committed by the Assad regime against detainees, and to impose urgent health control over detention centres".