The UN’s special envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen, on Sunday hailed the amnesty to be granted to thousands of Syrians convicted of crimes related to the “terrorism“, shortly before a new session of talks in Geneva on the new Syrian Constitution.
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“I have been briefed in detail on President Assad’s latest amnesty and look forward to being kept up to date on its progress and implementation.Geir Pedersen told reporters in Damascus after a meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Al-Mokdad. “This amnesty has potential and we can’t wait to see how things develop“.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had already announced several amnesties since the start of the war in 2011, which included numerous exceptions.
The latest amnesty decree, dated last April, applies to detainees tried for crimes related to “terrorismexcept for those accused of homicide.
This amnesty is considered by human rights activists to be the largest since the start of the conflict in Syria in 2011, which left some 500,000 dead.
The Syrian Justice Ministry said this month that hundreds of detainees had been released, without specifying the exact number.
A military official, Ahmad Touzan, told local media this week that the amnesty affected thousands of people, including those still wanted.
Mr. Touzan refused to divulge the number of detainees released, because “the numbers change from hour to hour“.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), which has an extensive network of sources in Syria, indicates that around 1,142 detainees have been released across the country since the amnesty came into effect.
Hundreds of other detainees should be released, according to the director of the OSDH, Rami Abdel Rahmane.
Mr Pedersen spoke days before Syria’s warring parties are due to meet in Geneva to continue talks on the new constitution.
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Since 2011, nearly half a million people have been incarcerated in the regime’s prisons and more than 100,000 have died there, in particular under torture, according to the OSDH.