Mass deaths in Syrian jails amount to crime of 'extermination': UN

Detainees held by the Syrian government are dying on a massive scale amounting to a state policy of "extermination" of the civilian population, a crime against humanity, United Nations investigators said on Feb. 8. 

The U.N. commission of inquiry called on the Security Council to impose "targeted sanctions" on Syrian officials in the civilian and military hierarchy responsible for or complicit in deaths, torture and disappearances in custody, but stopped short of naming them. 

In their report, the independent experts said they had also documented mass executions and torture of prisoners by two jihadi groups, Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), constituting war crimes. 

The report, "Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Deaths in Detention," covers March 10, 2011 to Nov. 30, 2015. It is based on interviews with 621 survivors and witnesses and evidence gathered by the team led by Chairman Paulo Pinheiro. 

"Over the past four and a half years, thousands of detainees have been killed while in the custody of warring parties," the Commission of Inquiry on Syria said, as reported by Reuters. 

"The killings and deaths described in this report occurred with high frequency, over a long period of time and in multiple locations, with significant logistical support involving vast State resources," the report said. "There are reasonable grounds to believe that the conduct described amounts to extermination as a crime against humanity." 

Tens of thousands of detainees are held by the government of President Bashar al-Assad at any one time, and thousands more have "disappeared" after arrest by state forces or gone missing after abduction by armed groups, it said. 

Through mass arrests and killing of...