syria-un-20150205 43

A/HRC/28/69 43 137. While the majority of interviews concerned the treatment of male detainees, female detainees also reported being severely beaten, sexually assaulted and given electric shocks. 138. In May 2014, a member of the medical staff at a field hospital in Rif Damascus was arrested during an attack by Government forces. He was taken to Air Force Intelligence in Mezzeh military airport where he was held until late 2014. He described being stripped to his underwear and placed in a very overcrowded, lice-infested cell. He and his cellmates were given little food. He was whipped. Interrogators then forced his limbs into a car tyre and beat him severely. 139. Another man, who had worked in a field hospital in an armed-group controlled area in the east of the country, was arrested by military intelligence in Damascus city in June 2014 and taken to branch 215. Accused of terrorism, he reported being beaten, kicked, suspended from the ceiling by his wrists, burnt with cigarettes and electrocuted. Another man, also held at branch 215 at the time and not released until December 2014, described being tortured and held in an overcrowded cell. 140. In June 2014, a man was transferred from another detention facility in Damascus to branch 235. He was beaten during the transfer by his guards. During his interrogation, he was beaten unconscious and, later, his thumbprint placed on a document he was not able to read. 141. In Aleppo governorate, while one man was held at an intelligence agency from April to late July 2014, he witnessed other detainees being severely beaten and heard a female detainee being beaten. 142. One woman, held in branch 227 in mid-2014, stated that she was beaten and kicked during interrogations during twice weekly interrogations over a three-month period. She reported that authorities used electric shocks on at least two other detainees. She was released after her family paid a bribe to the facility’s authorities. A woman, released from branch 235 in August 2014 stated that women were beaten there. 143. Former detainees stated that they would try to avoid transfer to Mezzeh (601) or Tishreen military hospitals because the torture and ill-treatment of patients at these facilities was notorious. One detainee held in Sednaya from 2012 to mid-2014 stated his cellmate had been transferred to Hospital 601 and was severely beaten there. 144. In February 2014, one detainee was transferred from an intelligence agency in Damascus city to Sednaya prison where he was held until late 2014. The guards beat and kicked him and the other detainees being taken to Sednaya. He describes prison guards entering the cells and severely beating, kicking, and stepping on him and the other detainees. In one such attack, the interviewee stated he was beaten unconscious and sustained a broken shoulder and several fractured ribs. 145. Government authorities in intelligence and security agencies as well as prisons committed sexual torture against male and female detainees. This included sexual assaults, electrocutions of the genitals and the threats of rape being made to the detainee or of his/her female family members.b 146. The above conduct was perpetrated by both prison guards and interrogators and was often designed to elicit confessions from the detainee. Some former detainees stated that, under torture, they were made to give names of other civilians who they would falsely indicate were involved in opposition activities. These names were reportedly used to effect further arbitrary arrests. Beating and other physical abuse by prison guards, often occurring b See paragraphs 176-183, below