HRW urges Syrian regime, Kurds to investigate fate of missing IS captives

The Syrian regime and Kurdish authorities have failed to prioritise investigating the fate of IS captives, HRW said.

2 min read

11 February, 2020

More than 8,000 captives are still missing [Getty]

Human Rights Watch has called for Syrian regime and Kurdish authorities to investigate the fate of thousands of people who are still missing after being detained by the Islamic State group.

More than 8,000 people, detained by the extremist group when it controlled swathes of Syria's north and east remain unaccounted for, the New York-based watchdog said, citing figures from the Syrian Network for Human Rights.

Among them are a few well-known cases of foreigners, such as British journalist John Cantlie and Italian Jesuit priest Paolo Dall'Oglio.

The rights organisation on Tuesday said both the Syrian regime and Kurdish authorities who now control former IS territories in the country's northeast have so far failed to prioritise the search for the truth about what happened to the missing.

Kurdish authorities in the northeast "rarely" provide answers to those in search of their relatives, HRW said.

"People whose relatives had been in areas now under the control of Syrian government forces similarly said they received only speculation that ISIS killed all its captives, or blanket denials of any knowledge," the report said.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces overran the extremist group's last pocket of Syrian territory in the eastern village of Baghouz in March last year.

It was the culmination of rival campaigns by the Kurdish authorities and the Russian-backed regime in Damascus to claw back the territory IS seized in 2014.

"The end of the territorial control of ISIS provides an opportunity to deliver answers to families whose relatives went missing in Syria," said HRW deputy regional director Joe Stork.

Kurdish authorities should create a "centralised focal point or civilian body" to collect information about the missing and reach out to their families, the rights group said.

They should also dedicate resources to protecting the mass graves believed to contain the bodies of thousands of people executed by IS, it added.

Dozens of such mass graves have been found in Iraq and Syria but the identification process is slow, costly and complicated.

The Kurdish administration lacks the official status to appeal for international aid and its own resources are hard pressed coping with the aftermath of IS' territorial defeat and mounting pressure from a hostile Turkey.

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