| Summary: | "Since the beginning of anti-government protests in March 2011, Syrian authorities have subjected tens of thousands of people to arbitrary arrests, unlawful detentions, enforced disappearances, ill-treatment and torture using an extensive network of detention facilities, an archipelago of torture centers, scattered throughout Syria. Based on more than 200 interviews with former detainees, including women and children, and defectors from the Syrian military, intelligence and security agencies, Torture Archipelago: Arbitrary Arrests, Torture and Enforced Disappearances in Syria's Underground Prisons since March 2011 focuses on 28 of these detention facilities. For each facility, most of them with cells and torture chambers and one or several underground floors, we provide the location, identify the agencies responsible for operating them, document the type of ill-treatment and torture used, and name, to the extent possible, the individuals running them. The facilities included in this report are those for which multiple witnesses have indicated the same location and provided detailed descriptions about the use of torture. The actual number of such facilities is likely much higher. The systematic patterns of ill-treatment and torture documented in this report clearly point to a state policy of torture and ill-treatment and therefore constitute a crime against humanity. The United Nations Security Council should refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court, adopt targeted sanctions on officials credibly implicated in abuses, and demand that Syria grant recognized international detention monitors access to all detention facilities, including those mentioned in this report."--P. [4] of cover.
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