Syrian Government Denies Cremating Bodies of Detainees

On Tuesday, May 16, the Syrian government aggressively denied accusations from the United States regarding the burning of prisoners’ bodies in a crematorium to displace any traces of evidence.  The Syrian government has thus regarded such claims as “lies” in order to combat such strains from the United States.

President Bashar al-Assad has been, for many years, said to have buried the bodies of executed prisoners in mass graves.  Although Syria denies this accusation, the Trump administration pushes this subject by saying that the crematorium, built next to the Sednaya prison facility, is used solely for the purpose of disposing of any evidence that could lead to charges regarding war crimes.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry rejects this by saying, “U.S. administrations continue fabricating lies and allegations to justify their aggressive and interventionist policies in other sovereign countries… These allegations are totally untrue and are only fabrications by the imagination of this administration and its agents.”  This may seem like an honest truth, but it is habit for many who are caught under a lie to respond to questions in a defensive manner.

Now in its seventh year of war, Syria stands on the brink of destruction as it refuses any possibility of “political transition” from the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.  According to Anne Barnard of The New York Times, “The Syrian government has refused to negotiate about power sharing or a phased transition, an idea that the international powers have been pushing more since the adoption in 2015 of Security Council Resolution 2254 calling for ‘credible, inclusive and nonsectarian governance.’”

With the release of declassified photographs by the State Department, the construction of the suspected crematorium can be seen outside the “main prison complex and its apparent use”.  These photographs do not prove that the facility is in fact a crematorium, but the facility so happens to be conveniently placed outside the prison complex and the need to dispose of bodies is high.  Barnard adds, “There is ample evidence that the Syrian government has for decades run a vast network of detention and torture facilities and carried out arbitrary forced disappearances, and that such practices have expanded greatly since the uprising broke out in 2011.”

Since it is suspected that countless prisoners have been explicitly killed, it is also noted that detainees lived through horrendous conditions and neglect within the prison system—many lived in “packed, dirty cells, conditions so severe that a United Nations commission found that they were amounted to the crime against humanity of ‘extermination’”[7].  In 2013, many residents in the Damascus area reported and witnessed a scent in the air, “something like burning hair.”[8]  This directly led to some believing that the burning of bodies was taking place within the prison facility.

Regardless of whether or not the facility is a crematorium, it is evident that the Syrian government has been suspected of abusing its political prisoners for a long while.  As the injustice persists, the United States continues to investigate this matter further in order to bring such cruelty to an end.