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| - The Syrian regime has been accused of various crimes during the civil war that started in 2011, including torture in prisons, summary executions, the use of chemical weapons and rape. Here is an overview: 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 show people with their eyes gouged out, emaciated bodies, people with wounds on the back or stomach, and also a picture of hundreds of corpses lying in a shed surrounded by plastic bags used for burials. Caesar's testimony in 2014 before the US Congress, in disguise, inspired a US law which came into force on Wednesday imposing new US sanctions on Syria and its allies. The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) said on Thursday seven Syrian men and women who suffered or witnessed rape and sexual abuse in regime detention centres have submitted a criminal complaint in Germany. They were all victims or witnesses of crimes including rape, "electrical shocks to the genitals... and forced abortion", it said. A UN inquiry published in March 2018 and based on 454 interviews said that Syrian troops and government-linked militias systematically used rape and sexual violence against civilians. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitoring group, says at least 100,000 people have died from torture or harsh conditions in regime custody since the conflict began. 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 February 2016, UN investigators said "the mass scale of deaths of detainees suggests that the government of Syria is responsible for acts that amount to extermination". A year later, Amnesty International said as many as 13,000 people were hanged between 2011 and 2015 at the notorious Saydnaya military-run prison near Damascus. This came on top of the 17,700 people it had already estimated as having perished in regime custody since the start of the conflict. In May 2017, Washington claimed that Damascus had built a "crematorium" at Saydnaya to cover up thousands of prisoner deaths. Human Rights Watch has since 2012 accused the Syrian armed forces of using banned incendiary weapons against its opponents. The Britain-based Observatory and other activists claim the regime has dropped TNT-packed barrels from aircraft. There have also been several allegations of the use of chemical weapons, including sarin and chlorine, which the regime denies. In April, the global chemical weapons watchdog for the first time explicitly blamed Syria for toxic attacks, saying President Bashar al-Assad's air force used the nerve gas sarin and chlorine three times in 2017. acm/jmy/ho/dwo
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