The majority of the 14,388 people tortured to death since March 2011 amid the Syrian civil war died at the hands of the Bashar Assad regime, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR).
Ahead of the U.N. International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the SNHR, which documents violations of civil rights, prepared a special report for Anadolu Agency (AA) on victims who lost their lives due to torture in Syria.
The U.N. has observed International Day in Support of Victims of Torture on June 26 every year since 1997 with the aim of eradicating the practice of torture.
At least 177 children and 63 women have died as a result of torture in Syria, the report said.
The Assad regime alone claimed the lives of 14,235 people through torture, including 173 children and 46 women, it added.
Meanwhile, the YPG/PKK terrorist organization tortured to death a total of 52 people, including one child and two women, and Daesh killed 32 civilians, including one child and 14 women.
Military opposition and anti-regime armed groups killed 69 people, including two children and one woman, as a result of torture.
The report also said Assad regime forces tortured 1.2 million Syrians detained during the civil war, most of whom are still being held by the regime.
"The Syrian regime applies torture to take revenge on the opposition," the report said, adding that the regime forces use 72 methods of physical, psychological and sexual torture on those kept under regime detention.
The report highlighted that the detainees live unsanitary conditions, while most of the regime prisons keep 50 people in an average of 24-square-meter (258-square-foot) cells.
The SNHR also stressed people in prisons were facing the dangerous spread of the coronavirus in the regime areas.
Opposition sources claim that at least 500,000 people are currently detained in the regime's prisons and interrogation centers.
Syrian man exposes regime torture
One of the victims of regime torture revealed the details of his suffering Thursday, stating that the regime has detained and tortured thousands in prisons and interrogation centers at undisclosed locations.
Muhammed Rahimo, 56, was jailed at various regime prisons for over five years, although he was not guilty of any crime, he said.
"They broke my ribs after arresting me and put in the car. They trampled on me. I was covered in blood," Rahimo told Anadolu Agency (AA), in an interview on the eve of the U.N. International Day in Support of Victims of Torture on June 26.
The regime forces raided his house and arrested him in 2013 for allegedly finding bullets in his home, Rahimo said, adding, "At an intelligence center in Hama, they beat me until I fainted."
"I had never been in front of a military commander in my life. I had never been to prison and never been so humiliated. They did not even respect my age. I had bruises on my body from the torture," he continued.
He was beaten with a plastic water pipe. "We (detainees) were beaten day and night until we confessed to a crime we did not commit."
The detainees were continuously threatened with death during torture, he said.
Previously, a former Syrian army photographer, known by the pseudonym "Caesar," fled the country in 2013, taking with him some 55,000 photographs documenting abuse and torture.
The photos Caesar brought out of Syria show people with their eyes gouged out, emaciated bodies, people with wounds on their backs or stomachs, and also a picture of hundreds of corpses lying in a shed surrounded by plastic bags used for burials.
Already in 2012, Human Rights Watch said Syria was holding tens of thousands of detainees in a "torture archipelago."
It documented 27 detention facilities nationwide used to hold people swept up in the government's crackdown on protesters.
Witnesses described torture, including beatings, the use of electricity or car battery acid, sexual assault and mock executions.
In April, the first court case worldwide on state-sponsored torture by the Assad regime was opened in Germany.
The two defendants are being tried on the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows a foreign country to prosecute crimes against humanity.
Last year, five Syrian torture survivors living in Norway filed legal complaints against senior officials of the regime. The complaint filed by the Syrian nationals documented crimes committed by 17 senior officials connected to the regime's military intelligence, general intelligence and political and criminal security divisions.
Lawyers asked the Norwegian prosecutors to investigate these 17 intelligence officials and issue international arrest warrants.
One of the plaintiffs who had been detained by Syria's General Intelligence Directorate and subjected to various torture techniques said he wanted to see those responsible for Assad's torture system stand trial.
