'11,000 still in jail'
Photo: Reuters
Activist: Syrian regime has arrested 60,000 people
Human rights activist decries 'revolving door' arrest policy, says prisons severely overcrowded
Syrian security forces have arrested some 60,000 people since the anti-government protests began in the country, a human rights activist told the London-based al-Sharq al-Awsat.
The report published Sunday quotes Yassin al-Haj Saleh, a political dissident who was himself imprisoned between 1980-1996, as saying that 11,000 people – most of whom were arrested at random – are still in jail as part of a "message of fear to the people".
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Most were detained for just a few days, he said, and then released to make room for others detained at random.
"The Syrian regime is using a 'revolving door' policy in order to arrest civilians. It is releasing dozens in order to arrest hundreds, and then releasing hundreds to make room for thousands," he told the paper.
Saleh added that the prisons had become so severely overpopulated that the regime was "using warehouses belonging to loyalist businessmen as camps for thousands of detainees" and turning athletic facilities into detainment cells.
On Sunday the Syrian government is scheduled to open up a "national dialogue" – or talks with the Opposition. But the latter claims those set to take part in the talks are not its representatives and that the dialogue is for show. On Friday demonstrators gathered in order to protest the "talks".
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