8,000 Syrians executed through 'military field courts' since 2011: Syrian Network for Human Rights

The Syrian regime executed 7,872 individuals since 2011 through military field courts, which gave defendants no right to due process, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) revealed on Tuesday, 13 September.

Military field courts are exceptional judicial institutions established in 1968 to try soldiers for crimes or failures committed during wartime.

The military field courts report directly to the Syrian president, the Minister of Defense and the heads of the regime's security apparatuses.

The Syrian regime began to rely heavily on military field courts after the beginning of the Syrian revolution in 2011, using it as a tool against civilian activists.

Syrian security officers were given carte blanche to refer civilians to the military field courts post-2011.

According to SNHR, at least 24,000 arrested by regime forces and forcibly disappeared had been referred to the military field court, with their fates remaining unknown.

In addition to death sentences, the military field court handed down almost 7,000 judgments, resulting in a lifetime in prison with hard labour.

The rights body describes the court as used by the regime to "effectively streamline crimes of enforced disappearance and … eliminate and crush dissent."

The military field courts do not give defendants the right to an attorney or a public trial, and trials are conducted secretly with specialised judges not appointed by the judiciary.

SNHR also identified ten different types of torture and intimidation used by the court against detainees during their trial, which were used in a "strategic" manner to produce specific sentences.

On 3 September, the Syrian regime dissolved the military field courts and referred all pending cases to the military judiciary.

Human rights advocates interpreted this decision as a way to obstruct the International Court of Justice (ICJ) investigations and the newly established UN mechanism to establish the fate of the disappeared in Syria.

Canada and the Netherlands brought a case before the ICJ accusing the Syrian regime of violating the Convention against Torture. The court's first session is to be held in October.

"Abolishing military field courts destroys evidence of crimes and vital information about the victims of enforced disappearance … eliminating these records means destroying the information necessary to know the fate of those who were sentenced and executed," said Mansour Omari, a Syrian journalist and human rights defender.

An estimated 136,000 Syrians are held in regime prisons in substandard conditions.

Human rights organisations have widely documented torture, sexual abuse and executions within regime prisons.