Children as young as 13 ‘tortured by Syrian troops’

Syrian forces have detained and tortured children as young as 13, a human rights campaign group has claimed.

“Children have not been spared the horror of Syria’s crackdown,” said Lois Whitman, of New York-based Human Rights Watch. “Syrian security forces have killed, arrested and tortured children in their homes, their schools or on the streets. In many cases, [they] have targeted children just as they have targeted adults.”

The report quoted a boy of 16 from a town near the Lebanese border as saying he was held for eight months, during which he was held in seven different detention centres, as well as the Homs Central Prison.

He said security forces first asked him how many protests he had participated in, and then cuffed his left hand to the ceiling and left him hanging there for about seven hours, standing on his toes. “They beat me for about two hours with cables and shocked me with a cattle prod,” he said.

In another case, the parents of a boy of 13 told how he had been arrested and held for nine days. They said security officers had burned him with cigarettes on his neck and hands and thrown boiling water on his body.

And an adult former detainee claimed some children were raped while in detention.

Meanwhile, clashes erupted between government troops and rebels in Damascus and villages in the country’s south yesterday, in fresh violence that killed at least 20 people.