AI: Harrowing Torture, Summary Killings in Secret ISIL Detention Centers

Amnesty international revealed Thursday that the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant [ISIL] – the al-Qaeda-affiliated group in Syria – has been accused of widespread human rights abuses including torture and summary killings in the first detailed account of the conditions in the areas it controls.

Among documented victims of ISIL are children as young as 13 who have been subjected to repeated floggings and other abuses, while eight-year-olds have been detained.

In a report prepared by Amnesty International the group is charged with running a regime of terror in the secret prisons that it operates both in al-Raqqa governorate and in Aleppo which it operates under its own version of the so-called sharia law.

Detailing violence against minors, the reports describes the case of one child whom ISIL had accused of stealing a motorbike who was flogged 30 or 40 times a day for several days.
Former detainees described a shocking catalogue of abuses in which they or others were flogged with rubber generator belts or cables, tortured with electric shocks or forced to adopt a painful stress position known as aqrab (scorpion), in which a detainee’s wrists are secured together over one shoulder.

It also detailed cases of death penalties being handed down in hearings at sharia courts lasting less than a minute.

In one of the most chilling parts of the report, witnesses described the ISIL judge’s practice of sitting in judgment wearing an explosive suicide belt at the Sadd al-Ba’ath prison at al-Mansura. The group accuses the judge of a reign of terror over the prison’s detainees.
Among those held in the ISIL prisons are known to be a number of foreign journalists kidnapped by the group.
The report comes amid growing concern over the rising strength of the extremist groups among the Syrian opposition.
Identifying seven separate prisons run by the group, and accusing it of abuses amounting to war crimes, Amnesty called on states in the Gulf who are backing ISIL – and Turkey – to take action to prevent the flow of arms and recruits to the jihadi group.
People who had been held at ISIS detention centers told Amnesty researchers of a shocking catalogue of violence including beatings with cables.

Some of those held by ISIS were suspected of theft or other crimes, while others were accused of the so-called “crimes” against Islam, such as smoking cigarettes… Amnesty International’s Middle East and north Africa director, Philip Luther, said: “The people of al-Raqqa and Aleppo are now suffering under a new form of tyranny imposed on them by ISIL, in which arbitrary detention, torture and executions have become the order of the day.

“Gulf states that have voiced support for the armed groups fighting against the Syrian government should take action to prevent arms flows, equipment or other support reaching ISIS in view of its appalling human rights record.”

He added: “The Turkish government, in particular, should prevent its territory being used by ISIL to bring in arms and recruits to Syria.”