Nearly 13,000 Syrians, including 108 children, have been tortured to
death in regime prisons since the uprising began in March 2011, a
monitoring group said March 13.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the youngest of the 12,751 victims was just 12 years old.
"Some
of the families of those killed under torture were forced to sign
statements that their loved ones had been killed by rebel groups," said
Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.
He told AFP the toll
did not include more than 20,000 detainees who have "disappeared" in
government prisons and whose fate remains unknown.
The
most notorious detention centres include those operated by Syria's Air
Force Intelligence and Military Intelligence services.
In total, the Britain-based Observatory said an estimated 200,000 people have been arrested over the past four years.
Security
officials starve detainees to death, deny medicine to sick prisoners
and subject them to psychological torture, Abdel Rahman said.
He said those arrested include political activists, rebels and regular demonstrators.
Former
detainees have described the horror of the torture techniques, many of
which have become infamous throughout Syria.
According
to a 2013 Human Rights Watch report, Syrian security officials beat
prisoners with batons and metal rods as they hung from the ceiling by
their wrists.
