In a recently published report by Amnesty International, it has been discovered that at least 17,723 people have died in custody in Syrian prisons since March 2011. This, the article states, is around “300 deaths per month” - not counting the much larger reality of all those people who have been abducted or are “missing”.

Reports of torture in the Saydnaya Military Prison vary from instances of prisoners being kept in cells with dead bodies, or detained in cells where women were raped right next to them by armed guards. Personal accounts of survivors fill the article with details of inhumane treatment inflicted upon them in order to coerce confessions, and sometimes to just punish them arbitrarily.These methods are believed to have been enacted and endorsed by the Syrian Intelligence agencies.

Amnesty International has called for the US and Russia to collaborate and assist in making this issue to death and torture in custody to the forefront of their peace talks agenda. But one wonders about the implications of a country like US calling out torture in Syrian prisons, when in-depth reports* exist of the various and violent methods of torture the CIA itself has inflicted, and continues to do so.

*https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/cia-torture-report