UN finds systematic disappearances in Syria

A UN panel probing war crimes in Syria reported today that people around the country are systematically vanishing without a trace as part of a widespread campaign of terror against civilians.

The expert panel said it found "a consistent country-wide pattern" of Syrian security, armed forces and pro-government militia seizing people in mass arrests or house searches and at checkpoints and hospitals, then making them disappear and denying that they even exist. Most of the victims have been young men.

Among the cases were a 60-year-old woman put in Homs prison for asking about her missing son, and a peaceful protester's brother taken in a house raid by political security agents.

An Air Force defector has described orders not to provide information about the whereabouts of detainees or to speak to their relatives, the report said.

The four experts' report said that rebel groups such as the al-Qaida-linked Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant that control large parts of northern Syria also have begun seizing people and running secret prisons.

It said the opposition's abductions of human rights advocates, journalists, activists, humanitarian workers, religious leaders and perceived supporters of President Bashar Assad's government usually differ because the victims tend to be taken as hostages for ransom or prisoner exchanges, and their existence isn't concealed.

However in recent months the groups have also begun adopting the government's practice of making people vanish.

Amnesty International also reported today, based on interviews with former detainees, that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant has "ruthlessly flouted the rights of local people" at secret prisons in northern Syria at which torture and summary killings are common.

In an 18-page report, the Britain-based watchdog said children as young as 8 are held along with adults in seven ISIL-run detention facilities in Syria's Aleppo and Raqqa provinces. Many are held for challenging ISIL's rule, petty crimes like theft or for committing purported "crimes against Islam" such as smoking cigarettes.

The disappearances are "part of a widespread campaign of terror against the civilian population," and amount to a crime against humanity, reported the UN Syria war crimes panel, chaired by Brazilian diplomat and scholar Paulo Sergio Pinheiro.

The panel pressed Syria's government to provide information and called on both sides to stop the practice.

The allegations from the UN panel and Amnesty International came just hours after the UN General Assembly approved a resolution expressing outrage at "widespread and systematic gross violations" by Syrian authorities. The resolution was initiated by Saudi Arabia on behalf of dozens of countries, including the United States.