MADRID 16 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The spokesman for the US State Department, Matthew Miller, denounced this Friday that since the International Court of Justice (ICJ) urged the Syrian authorities to end their program of torture and ill-treatment of detainees just one year ago, “the (Syrian) regime has not complied with these directives.”
“Human rights and legal organizations continue to document the regime’s use of arbitrary detention and torture of detainees, including, most recently, against Syrians fleeing the conflict in Lebanon,” Miller detailed.
The Department has noted that “victims, survivors and their families deserve justice and accountability.” “Accordingly, the Department of State announces the designation of Abdul Salam Fajr Mahmoud, Brigadier General of the Syrian Air Force, his wife Suhair Nader al Jundi, and their four adult children under Section 7031 due to their involvement in serious violations of human rights, namely, torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” they added.
According to data provided by the spokesperson, during the conflict in Syria, “more than 15,000 cases have been documented of people who have died due to torture and other ill-treatment, including American citizens.”
He therefore called on the Syrian authorities “to immediately cease their brutal and systematic use of torture and comply with the ICJ order.”
A year ago, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) urged the Syrian authorities to end their program of torture and ill-treatment of detainees, in a binding and unprecedented ruling since the outbreak of the conflict in 2011 and that responds to a litigation initiated by Canada and the Netherlands.
In June 2023, the two European countries submitted a request to the ICJ alleging that Bashar al Assad’s regime was violating the Convention against Torture with actions dating back to 2011, with its “violent repression of civil demonstrations” and subsequent measures adopted in the framework of the subsequent conflict.
The judges of the UN court then adopted a series of precautionary measures that involve “preventing” and “not committing” acts of torture and ill-treatment and, at the same time, preserving any possible evidence in these cases.
The intervention is theoretically mandatory, but ‘de facto’ the ICJ has no way of ensuring that this is the case. The court already intervened, for example, in the days after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to request an end to an aggression that remains open to this day.
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