UN Demands Accountability over Syria Mass Disappearances

A Syrian flag flutters in Damascus, Syria April 20, 2018. REUTERS/Ali Hashisho
A Syrian flag flutters in Damascus, Syria April 20, 2018. REUTERS/Ali Hashisho
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UN Demands Accountability over Syria Mass Disappearances

A Syrian flag flutters in Damascus, Syria April 20, 2018. REUTERS/Ali Hashisho
A Syrian flag flutters in Damascus, Syria April 20, 2018. REUTERS/Ali Hashisho

The UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday called for those behind “massive scale” enforced disappearances in Syria over the past decade of conflict to be held accountable.

The resolution, presented by Britain and a number of European countries, along with the US, Turkey and Qatar, decried that Syria’s crisis had entered a second decade “marked by consistent patterns of gross violations.”

The war in Syria has killed nearly 500,000 people since it started in 2011, with all sides in the increasingly complex conflict accused of war crimes.

Tuesday’s resolution, adopted with 26 of the council’s 47 members in favor, six opposed and 15 abstaining, voiced particular concern about the fate of tens of thousands of people who have vanished, AFP reported.

The text “strongly condemns the continued use of involuntary or enforced disappearances in the Syrian Arab Republic, and related human rights violations and abuses, which have been carried out with consistency, in particular by the Syrian regime.”

It also criticized enforced disappearances by other parties to the conflict, including the ISIS group, but said the Syrian regime was the main perpetrator.

The resolution voiced alarm at recent comments by the UN’s independent commission of inquiry on the rights situation in Syria indicating that “widespread enforced disappearance has been deliberately perpetrated by Syrian security forces throughout the past decade on a massive scale.”

The investigators had indicated that such disappearances had been used “to spread fear, stifle dissent and as punishment,” and that tens of thousands of men, women, boys and girls detained by Syrian authorities “remain forcibly disappeared.”

Presenting the resolution to the council, British Ambassador Simon Manley slammed the regime’s role in such a massive number of disappearances was “simply inexcusable.”

That regime, he said, “has the bureaucratic means to provide information on these disappeared individuals, the means to end the suffering of the families and loved ones of these people.”

“But it chooses not to employ those means. This is a deliberate act of unspeakable cruelty.”

He echoed a charge in the resolution, accusing Damascus’s forces of “intentionally prolonging the suffering of hundreds of thousands of family members.”

It emphasized “the need for accountability, including for crimes committed in relation to enforced disappearance,” stressing that “accountability is vital in peace negotiations and peace-building processes.”

Steep bread and diesel price hikes have gone into force in government-held parts of Syria, bringing more pain for civilians in a long-running economic crisis.

Damascus has repeatedly raised fuel prices in recent years to tackle a financial crunch sparked by the country’s decade-long civil war and compounded by a spate of Western sanctions.

The price of diesel fuel nearly tripled and the price of bread doubled, according to the official SANA news agency, only days after Damascus announced a 25 percent increase in the price of petrol.

“This was all expected and now we fear further increases in the price of ... food and medicine,” Damascus resident Wael Hammoud, 41, said while he waited for more than 30 minutes to hail a cab to take him to work.

The price hikes coincided with a decree issued by President Bashar Assad that increases public sector salaries by 50 percent and sets the minimum wage at 71,515 Syrian pounds per month ($28 at the official rate), up from 47,000 pounds ($18).



Hamas Says It Is Investigating Possible Error over Hostage Body

 20 February 2025, Palestinian Territories, Khan Younis: Palestinian Hamas members carry one of the four coffins during the handover of the bodies of four Israeli hostages, killed in the Israeli war on Gaza, to the Red Cross in Khan Younis. (dpa)
20 February 2025, Palestinian Territories, Khan Younis: Palestinian Hamas members carry one of the four coffins during the handover of the bodies of four Israeli hostages, killed in the Israeli war on Gaza, to the Red Cross in Khan Younis. (dpa)
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Hamas Says It Is Investigating Possible Error over Hostage Body

 20 February 2025, Palestinian Territories, Khan Younis: Palestinian Hamas members carry one of the four coffins during the handover of the bodies of four Israeli hostages, killed in the Israeli war on Gaza, to the Red Cross in Khan Younis. (dpa)
20 February 2025, Palestinian Territories, Khan Younis: Palestinian Hamas members carry one of the four coffins during the handover of the bodies of four Israeli hostages, killed in the Israeli war on Gaza, to the Red Cross in Khan Younis. (dpa)

Hamas said on Friday it was investigating a possible error in identifying human remains handed to Israel under a ceasefire deal as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened retaliation for failing to release the body of hostage Shiri Bibas.

Hamas was due to hand over the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two sons Kfir and Ariel on Thursday, along with the remains of a fourth hostage under the ceasefire deal that has halted fighting in Gaza since last month.

Four bodies were delivered and the identities of the Bibas boys and the other hostage, Oded Lifshitz, were confirmed.

But Israeli specialists said the fourth body was that of an unidentified woman and not Bibas, who was kidnapped along with her sons and her husband, Yarden, during the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Basem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said "unfortunate mistakes" could occur, especially as Israeli bombing had mixed the bodies of Israeli hostages and Palestinians, thousands of whom were still buried in the rubble.

"We confirm that it is not in our values or our interest to keep any bodies or not to abide by the covenants and agreements that we sign," he said in a statement.

Hamas said separately that it would investigate the Israeli assertions and announce the results.

The failure to hand over the body and the staged public handover of the four coffins on Thursday, caused outrage in Israel and drew a threat of retaliation from Netanyahu.

"We will act with determination to bring Shiri home along with all our hostages - both living and dead - and ensure Hamas pays the full price for this cruel and evil violation of the agreement," he said in a video statement, accusing Hamas of acting "in an unspeakably cynical manner" by placing the body of a Gaza woman in the coffin instead of Bibas.

Hamas said in November 2023 that the children and their mother had been killed in an Israeli air strike and Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, said Netanyahu "bears full responsibility for killing her and her children."

But the Israeli military said intelligence assessments and forensic analysis of the bodies of the Bibas children indicated that they were deliberately killed by their captors. Chief military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the boys were killed by the militants "with their bare hands", but gave no details.

Netanyahu gave no details of a possible Israeli response, but the incident underscored the fragility of the ceasefire agreement reached with US backing and with the help of Qatari and Egyptian mediators last month.

SATURDAY EXCHANGE

Six living hostages are due for release on Saturday in exchange for 602 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, according to Hamas, and the start of negotiations for a second phase of the ceasefire is expected in the coming days.

"Hamas must return the hostages as agreed in the ceasefire- the living and the deceased," Israeli military spokesperson Nadav Shoshani said in a statement on social media platform X. "They have to bring Shiri back, and they have to release the 6 living hostages expected tomorrow."

Netanyahu's office confirmed it had been officially informed of the names of the six hostages to be released, which Hamas sources said was expected at around 8.30 a.m. (0630 GMT).

As the tension over the Gaza ceasefire rose, Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to intensify operations in another Palestinian territory, the occupied West Bank, after a number of explosions blew up buses standing empty in their depots near Tel Aviv.

No casualties were reported but the explosions were a reminder of the campaign of suicide attacks on public transport that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s.

'THEY MAKE A JOKE OF US'

Both sides have repeatedly accused the other of ceasefire violations, with Hamas threatening to delay the release of hostages over what it said was Israel's refusal to allow housing materials and other aid into Gaza, a charge Israel denied.

"It's like they make a joke of us," said 75-year-old Ilana Caspi. "We are so in grief and this is even more, it's like you make a punch again, another one and another one, it's really terrible."

The Red Cross told Reuters it was "concerned and unsatisfied" by the fact that the handover of the bodies had not been conducted privately and in a dignified manner.

Despite the outrage over Shiri Bibas, there was no indication that Israel would not take part in talks over a second phase of the ceasefire deal.

The Israel Hayom newspaper reported that Israeli negotiators were considering seeking an extension of the 42-day ceasefire, to delay moving to a second phase, which would involve talks over hard-to-resolve issues including an end to the war and the future of Hamas in Gaza.