Children as young as 13 tortured, electrocuted by Syrian forces: rights group

Friday, 03 February 2012

Children in Turkey carry pictures of 13-year-old Hamza al-Khatib, the Syrian boy, who activists say was tortured and killed by security forces. (Reuters)

By Al Arabiya

DUBAI

Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have detained and tortured children as young as 13 with impunity, opened fire on them and used schools as detentions centers of military barracks, Human Rights Watch reported on Friday.

“Children have not been spared the horror of Syria’s crackdown. Syrian security forces have killed, arrested, and tortured children in their homes, their schools, or on the streets. In many cases, security forces have targeted children just as they have targeted adults,” said Lois Whitman, children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch.

A 17-year-old girl from Tal Kalakh, was quoted by the rights group as saying that in May 2011, security forces entered her school and arrested all the boys in her class, after questioning them about the anti-regime slogans painted on the school walls.

“About four [officers] jumped over the walls, and the rest came through the main gate. They hit [the boys] with their hands and cursed them. I left school three days after that. I don’t know if [the boys] ever came back,” said Nazih (not her real name).

The rights groups reported that children as young as 13 were “held in solitary confinement, severely beaten and electrocuted, burned them with cigarettes, and left to dangle from metal handcuffs for hours at a time, centimeters above the floor.”

16-year-old boy, Ala’a, from Tal Kalakh, said he was detained eight months, starting in May 2011, after he took part and read poetry in demonstration. “He was released in late January 2012 after his father bribed a prison guard with 25,000 ($436) Syrian pounds, the rights group reported.

Hossam, 13, said that security forces detained him and a relative, also 13, in May 2011 and tortured him for three days at a military security branch about 45 minutes by car from Tal Kalakh.

“Every so often they would open our cell door and yell at us and beat us. They said, ‘You pigs, you want freedom?’ They interrogated me by myself. They asked, ‘Who is your god?’ And I said, ‘Allah.’ Then they electrocuted me on my stomach, with a prod. I fell unconscious,” he said.

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