Reports: Syrian prison guards gun down 25+ during Islamist riot
Monday, July 7, 2008 Free Headline Alerts
NICOSIA — Syria has reportedly killed dozens of Islamist inmates during a riot outside Damascus, in one of its worst confrontations with the banned Muslim Brotherhood.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch said the riot, hours before Syrian President Bashar Assad had been scheduled to meet his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, erupted on Saturday at Saydnaya prison, about 35 kilometers outside Damascus. HRW said inmates asserted that at least 25 prisoners were killed.
"We have the names of nine prisoners who were shot and apparently killed, and inmates say at least 25 prisoners were killed in all," HRW researcher Nadim Houry said.
In London, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed the shooting of Islamist inmates. The group said the casualty count at Saydnaya exceeded 30.
"The number of the dead are in the tens," the exiled Syrian group said in a statement. "Prisoners have gone to the roof, fearing for their lives. Military police elements are still firing live bullets. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights demands that President Bashar Assad intervenes immediately to stop this massacre."
Saydnaya is a maximum security facility that contains 1,500 inmates, nearly all of them convicted by Syria's military courts. Most of the prisoners were suspected of being members of the outlawed Brotherhood.
The human rights groups said Islamist inmates took nine prison guards and officials hostage during an assault by authorities. Another group of military police was surrounded and agreed to surrender its weapons to the inmates.
The riot was regarded as one of the worst since the early 1980s, when the Syrian Army killed thousands of Brotherhood members. Many of the Brotherhood members were inmates slain in Aleppo after a failed assassination attempt against Assad's father, then-President Hafez Assad.