A/HRC/22/59 Findings 42. Torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment have been committed by Government forces and affiliated militia, notably local Shabbiha. This is in violation of Syria’s obligations under international human rights and humanitarian law. 43. Severe pain was inflicted upon persons in official detention centres, in unofficial detention centres, at checkpoints and during house searches. As was found in previous reports, torture was inflicted to punish, humiliate or to extract information from detainees. Much of the physical violence described by interviewees — including kicking, hitting, beating (including beating on the soles of the feet), flogging, inflicting electric shocks, burning, extended hanging from the wrists, and threatening the victim with rape in circumstances where the interrogators had the power to carry out this threat — have been found to constitute torture by various international tribunals.d 44. Torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment have been perpetrated by Government forces and affiliated militia as part of a widespread attack directed against a civilian population, with knowledge of the attack. Torture in official detention centres was also perpetrated as part of a systematic attack on a civilian population, with knowledge of that attack. Consequently, torture and other inhuman acts as crimes against humanity have been committed. This conduct is also prosecutable as the war crimes of torture and inhuman treatment. 45. On the basis of interviews conducted, members of the intelligence agencies, in particular Military, Political and Air Force Intelligence are primarily responsible for torture and ill-treatment. The names of direct perpetrators, the heads of branches where torture has been found to have occurred and the Directors of the relevant intelligence branches have been withheld. 46. The conditions of detention as described in interviews conducted would, if verified, constitute the cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of those detained. II. Anti-Government armed groups 47. The commission received five reports of the use of torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment by anti-Government armed groups. A sixth interview, with a FSA prison guard, detailed conditions of detention at one facility in Duma, Damascus governorate. 48. Three interviews centred on the treatment of captured Government soldiers and Shabbiha (or those perceived to belong to local Shabbiha groups) in Aleppo governorate. One interviewee, who had worked at Political Intelligence in Aleppo, described his kidnapping, detention and torture by members of anti-Government armed groups. He stated he was taken by force from his house in Aleppo city to a heavily guarded house in another neighbourhood. There he was interrogated about his treatment of detainees while being kicked and beaten with electrical cables and sticks by at least seven men. He was then placed in a room with five other detainees before being transferred to a larger detention centre in Hritan which held 54 other people, most of whom were captured soldiers. Some stated they were civilians suspected of collaborating with the Government. He remained there until late November when he was released. During that time he suffered multiple d GE.13-10627 See A/HRC/21/50, Annex II. 73