Thousands of Syrians 'tortured' by regime

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Images of torture carried out by the Syrian regime forces are on display in the halls of the UN

Nearly 13,000 Syrians, including 108 children, have been tortured to death in regime prisons since the uprising began in March 2011, a monitoring group said on Friday. According to AFP, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the youngest of the 12,751 victims was just 12 years old.

"Some of the relatives of those killed under torture were forced to sign statements that their loved ones had been killed by rebel groups," said observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman. He told AFP that the figures quoted did not include more than 20,000 detainees who have "disappeared" in government prisons and whose fate remains unknown. The most notorious detention centres include those operated by Syria's Air Force Intelligence and Military Intelligence services.

The UK-based rights' group said that an estimated 200,000 people have been arrested over the past four years. "Those arrested include political activists, rebels and regular demonstrators," Abdel Rahman pointed out. Security officials often starve detainees to death, deny medicine to sick prisoners and subject them to psychological torture, he added.

Former detainees have described the horror of the torture techniques, many of which have become infamous throughout Syria. According to a 2013 Human Rights Watch report, Syrian security officials beat prisoners with batons and metal rods as they were hanging by their wrists from the ceiling.

A report issued by 21 international aid organisations on Thursday said that rape and sexual abuse are also used in regime detention centres as a "method of war".