Syria is operating detention centers where guards and interrogators torment Syrian prisoners by ripping out their fingernails, burning them with battery acid, inflicting electric shock and other methods of torture, Human Rights Watch said in
a new report released Tuesday. “They put staples in my fingers, chest and ears. I was only allowed to take them out if I spoke. The nails in the ears were the most painful,” a 31-year-old detainee told the group last month. Intelligence agents used electric stun guns on his genitals and used a car battery to give him electric shock, he said.
“I thought I would never see my family again,” the detainee told them.
Human Rights Watch said it had documented torture at 27 detention sites across Syria since the uprising against the government began in March 2011, based on interviews with more than 200 witnesses. It named the officials who allegedly run the detention centers, mapped out the sites' locations and provided bleak sketches to illustrate the kinds of torture described by Syrians who had escaped.