A/HRC/22/59
Damascus governorate
18.
The commission recorded an account of a physician who was arrested and tortured
due to his medical and humanitarian activities. The interviewee provided medical assistance
and transported medical supplies and medicines to civilians and wounded in FSAadministered hospitals in Homs, Aleppo, Hama and Dara’a. He was arrested in Damascus
on 17 July. When security forces came to his house, an officer [name withheld] asked him,
“Why are you assisting the opposition? Why do you provide them with medicine?” The
interviewee replied that he was providing humanitarian assistance, to which the officer
replied, “I will teach you what assistance is; you will see it with your own eyes.” After
threatening to rape the interviewee’s wife he shot her, his two young daughters and the
doctor himself. The interviewee was taken to a military hospital, where he recounted how
he and other patients in the hospital who were affiliated with the opposition were tortured
and ill-treated. Medical staff burned their bodies with cigarettes and urinated on them. After
17 days in the hospital, the interviewee was transferred to a branch of Military Security in
Damascus. After three months in prison, he was charged with providing medical support to
anti-Government armed groups. In late October, a lawyer secured his release.
19.
During the ten days of heavy shelling and aerial bombardment of Al-Tal in early
August, Al-Hosna hospital, Al-Tal military hospital, and Al-Zahraa hospital were severely
damaged.
20.
In late August, Dumair was heavily shelled. One interviewee recounted how a
fighter jet dropped three bombs on a residential area, which destroyed six houses, all of
which were near a field hospital.
21.
One interviewee described how he witnessed the shelling of Al-Huda hospital in
Sbeneh in September. The interviewee had been at the hospital three to four days prior to its
shelling. He described it as a four-storey building, with one ward dedicated to obstetrics,
where pregnant women were being treated, one dedicated to children, one dedicated to
emergencies and one dedicated to treating FSA fighters. All the wards were full, including
the one with FSA fighters, who were around 20–25 in number. The interviewee believed
that the hospital was deliberately targeted due to the presence of wounded FSA fighters. In
support of this, he pointed out that other shells had landed in the vicinity of the hospital.
Idlib governorate
22.
Jabal Al-Zawiya was subjected to heavy bombardment in early August. During the
bombardment, Adnan Kiwan Hospital was targeted, damaging the building and its
infrastructure.
Dayr az Zawr governorate
23.
Al-Saeed hospital in the Al-Arfi neighbourhood of Dayr az Zawr, which provided
medical care to opposition fighters, was bombarded multiple times, on 19 July, in
September, and on 26 November. Due to the bombardment, the equipment and staff of the
hospital have been transferred to two concealed field hospitals. Patients of the hospital were
injured during the attacks. One of the rockets fired at the hospital landed inside the
operating room.
24.
During the heavy shelling of Al-Muhassan that began on 29 September, a field
hospital set up in a school was shelled over 6 times. The repeated shelling of the field
hospital demonstrates that it was deliberately targeted, providing reasonable grounds to
believe that the war crime of attacking protected objects has been perpetrated.
112
GE.13-10627
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