The Syrian government constructed and is using a crematorium at its notorious Sednaya military prison near Damascus to clandestinely dispose of the bodies of prisoners it continues to execute inside the facility, the U.S. State Department has said.
Thousands of executed detainees have been dumped in mass graves in recent years, said acting assistant secretary of state Stuart Jones. “What we’re assessing is that if you have that level of production of mass murder, then using the crematorium would . . . allow the regime to manage that number of corpses . . . without evidence.”
These atrocities have been carried out seemingly with unconditional support from Russia and Iran who are Assad’s main backers.
Accusations of mass murder and incinerated bodies, evoking the Holocaust of World War 2, starkly contrast with the recent visit to Washington by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak smiling broadly in the Oval Office.
The State Department cites “multiple sources ” in saying that “the regime is responsible for killing as many as 50 detainees per day at Sednaya,” where up to 70 people were packed in cells designed for five. Former prisoners have also described mass hangings.