Fears for captives in Syria rebel prisons

26 Aug 2012, 5:35 pm   -   Source: AAP

Human rights groups are worried that Syrian rebels are holding captives in unofficial lockups without any oversight.

AL-BAB, Syria AP - A primary school hallway in this north Syrian city is now a prison.

Behind a padlocked gate sit 10 men, accused by the rebels who have taken over the city of theft, thuggery and spying for the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

The head guard says all prisoners get three meals a day and one shower.

All will be tried by the town's new legal council, and no one is mistreated, he says.

One alleged crook, however, has two black eyes.

"I flipped my motorcycle," he said, speaking within earshot of his captors.

An accused regime informer has a bruised face and red stripes on his arm, as if he's been lashed with a cord.

"I fell down," he said.

The al-Bab prison is one of the many lockups that rebels fighting against al-Assad's regime have set up after seizing areas from government forces.

These facilities report to no national or regional authority, causing concern among human rights groups and leading to a wide range of practices.

One badly bruised captive told Human Rights Watch he'd been beaten daily for three weeks.

Elsewhere, reporters from The Associated Press saw former regime soldiers frolicking in a swimming pool with their captors.

Little evidence has surfaced that rebels are practising the institutionalised torture that human rights groups accuse al-Assad's regime of.

But many prisoners bear bruises and scars from beatings.

Some rebel groups acknowledge executing some prisoners.

Others realise the living are worth more than the dead and seek "blood money" from captives' families or try to exchange them for rebels held by the regime.

The captors also vary.

Running north Syria's largest known rebel prison, in the town of Marea, is a barrel-shaped former truck driver nicknamed "Jumbo" who has a bullet lodged in his head from a gunfight with government troops.

Others are run by civilian councils of lawyers, teachers and Muslim clerics who administer a mix of Syrian and Islamic law.

The lack of oversight worries human rights groups.

"It is extremely important that the opposition leadership send a strong message that the kinds of abuses we've seen are not acceptable and that those committing them will be held accountable," said Anna Neistat of Human Rights Watch, who is researching rebel prisons.

More than 17 months of unrest in Syria has killed more than 20,000 people, anti-regime activists say. Al-Assad blames the violence on foreign-backed terrorists seeking to weaken the country.

The rebels have recently pushed the army from several towns in the country's north, leaving them in charge of services like distributing fuel and bread and running prisons.

Their fractured approach to administering justice shows how far they are from forming an alternative national government should al-Assad's regime fall.

North Syria's two largest prisons are run by the Revolutionary Council of Aleppo and the Countryside, which is closely linked to the area's largest rebel grouping, the Islamist Tawheed Brigade. The group holds hundreds of prisoners.

The AP was denied access to the group's main prison in Marea, north of Aleppo. But Neistat interviewed two prisoners in private during a visit this month.

Both said they'd been beaten on the soles of their feet, a practice some rebel leaders say is permitted by Islamic law.

The improvised nature of the rebel lockups is clear in al-Bab, 45km northeast of Aleppo.

One of the town's two lockups is a bare room in a former government office.

Interviewed alone, the five captives said they had not been abused and ate regularly, though they worried the rebels were using them to raise money by demanding ransom.

They had been divided by sect.

Othman said three former police officers - all Sunni Muslims like most of the rebels - had been exonerated and would go home soon.

The two others were military security officers and Alawites, members of the religious minority of al-Assad and many in his regime.

Othman said the two men had repressed anti-regime protests and the regime would want them back.

"We want a prisoner exchange, nothing more and nothing less," he said.

Other groups too have used captives to their advantage.

A rebel group in Aleppo held 13 captured soldiers in their rural villa.

While technically prisoners, the captives moved about freely and even swam with them in the villa's pool.

All were Sunni Muslims who had been doing mandatory military service when caught.

Even when interviewed alone, they said they ate better with the rebels than they had in the army and trusted them to get them home.

A while later, the uncle of one of the captives paid the rebels $US750 ($A720) to release his nephew, a captured conscript from Damascus.

"It's fine," Jihad Khalid said. "If they'd asked for more, we would have paid it."

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