Political prisoners must be freed Over 15,000 detainees and confirmed 53 detainees under torture Local Coordination Committees in Syria Damascus-12/7/2011 Local Coordination Committees of Syria said today that Syrian regime continues to detain peaceful protesters, activists, journalists, and bloggers across the country despite superficial lifting of emergency law. The estimated number of detainees since the beginning of the Syrian revolution is in the tens of thousands, whereas the estimated number of detainees under arrest at this moment is about 15,000 suffering all types of torture, ill-treatment, and insults which has lead to the death of at least 53 detainees to this moment, and there have been thousands of cases of enforced disappearance. Syrian forces detain over 4000 prisoners in the Mukhabarat (Intelligence) Air Force Center in the capitol Damascus alone. Omar Idliby, spokesman of the Local Coordination Committee, said that “even the corpses of the martyrs haven’t been spared detainment with the aim of negotiating for them (the corpses), and several of the families of the martyrs suffered detainment with the aim of putting pressure on them and to prevent them from speaking about the details of the deaths of their sons, just as the wounded peaceful protesters were detained from the hospitals and the detainment of family members of protesters so that protesters turn themselves in. The detainments-which included children, students, girls, women, and senior citizens- are marked by the barbaric manner in which they are conducted of armed attacks and raids on homes and the destruction of property and stealing what may be stolen from the homes. And despite the regime’s claims of issuing decrees of “amnesty” in the past few months, prisoners of the revolution constitute a very small percentage of those released in comparison to the percentage of ordinary criminals and felons who are released. Idliby said, “Dozens of prisoners of freedom in Adra Central Prison continue their food strike since 2 weeks ago, they demand to be unconditionally released, including the protesters and prisoners of thought detained prior to the revolution. Through the massive detainments and following harassment and torture, the regime aims to break the spirits of the Syrians and to intimidate them with aims of discouraging from continuing forth with their revolution for the sake of freedom and democracy. But the people are not intimidated by bullets and will not stop protesting the siege imposed by tanks and will not bend to the brutality and cruelty of the prisons. The case of arbitrary arrests must remain strongly present in all of our protests and protest activism until the last detainee is released and until the liberation of Syria, the nation and the people, from the regime of tyranny and the repressive instruments. Victory belongs to our revolution and mercy to all our eternal martyrs.
