EVIDENCE

Updated Syrian Prisoner Data Reveals Hundreds of Deaths

Activists fear that hundreds or thousands more are still to come.

In a quiet online move last week, the Syrian government updated its civil registries and in the process revealed that hundreds of people held by Bashar al-Assad’s regime had died while incarcerated, human-rights monitors say. They fear that hundreds or thousands more deaths are still to come. Watchdog-group officials told the Associated Press that the number of prison deaths are proof of mass killings by the Assad government; investigators in the Hague have been preparing a war-crimes case against Assad and his top officials for years. Amnesty International officials say they believe that between 5,000 and 13,000 detainees were killed in just one prison, which became known during the country’s bloody civil war for beating, raping, and starving its inmates. Photos smuggled from a hospital show that more than 11,000 people died in various facilities near Damascus.