GENEVA, Switzerland: The Assad regime came under fire from two UN bodies on Tuesday, one of which accused Syria’s air force of deliberately bombing water sources in December and another saying Syria has become a “torture chamber.”
In a report, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria said that the deliberate act of bombing water sources, which cut off water for 5.5 million people in and around the Syria’s capital Damascus, amounted to a “war crime”.
The commission said it had found no evidence of deliberate contamination of the water supply or demolition by armed groups, as the Syrian government maintained at the time.
Meanwhile, the top UN human rights official called for the release of tens of thousands of detainees held in Syria’s prisons and said that bringing perpetrators of crimes including torture to court was vital for reaching a lasting peace.
“Today in a sense the entire country has become a torture-chamber; a place of savage horror and absolute injustice,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein told the UN Human Rights Council.
“Ensuring accountability, establishing the truth and providing reparations must happen if the Syrian people are ever to find reconciliation and peace. This cannot be negotiable,” he told the Geneva forum at the start of a session on Syria.
He appealed to the warring sides to halt torture and executions and to free detainees or at least provide basic information: “names and localities of those in detention and the place of burial of those who have died.”
He lamented the fact that efforts to end “this senseless carnage” had been repeatedly vetoed, an apparent reference to Russia and China’s decisions to veto UN Security Council resolutions on several occasions since the war began.
Zeid noted that the conflict, which has raged for six years, began when security officials detained and tortured a group of children who had daubed anti-government graffiti on a school wall in Daraa.
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and Tom Miles)
Assad regime bombed Damascus water supply, turned Syria into a ‘torture chamber’ — UN officials
Assad regime bombed Damascus water supply, turned Syria into a ‘torture chamber’ — UN officials
US will prevent Iranian nuclear bomb ‘one way or the other’
- Implicit threat of miitary action but Tehran remains optimistic of deal
TEHRAN, PARIS: The US will prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons “one way or the other,” US Energy Secretary Chris Wright warned on Wednesday.
US President Donald Trump “believes firmly we cannot have a nuclear-armed Iran,” Wright said as the International Energy Agency met in Paris. “They’ve been very clear about what they would do with nuclear weapons. It’s entirely unacceptable.
“So one way or the other, we are going to end, deter Iran’s march toward a nuclear weapon.”
Despite the implicit threat of military action, which Trump has said is not off the table amid a massive increase in US military forces in the region, Iranian officials remain optimistic that an agreement can be reached after talks in Geneva on Tuesday that Tehran described as “constructive.”
In a call with Rafael Grossi, head of the UN nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran said was drafting a framework for future talks with Washington. Iran’s focus was on drafting an initial and coherent framework to advance talks with the US, he said. However, US Vice President J.D. Vance said Tehran had not yet acknowledged all of Washington’s red lines.
Earlier on Wednesday Reza Najafi, Iran’s permanent representative to the UN nuclear agency in Vienna, met Grossi and the ambassadors of China and Russia “to exchange views” on the forthcoming session of the agency's board of governors and “developments related to Iran’s nuclear program,” Iran’s mission in Vienna said.
Tehran has suspended some cooperation with the agency and restricted the watchdog's inspectors from accessing sites bombed by Israel and the US during a 12-day war in June. It accuses the UN body of bias and of failing to condemn the strikes.
