Syria civil war: Photos 'confirm deaths of 7,000 in prisons since start of conflict'

Many of the victims were said to have suffered abuse and torture including beatings and starvation

The Syrian national flag waes in the wind over Aleppo's central prison (Getty Images)

Photographs smuggled out from inside Syrian prisons by a defector two years ago were today claimed to confirm the deaths in custody of at least 7,000 people since the start of the civil war.

Many of the victims were said to have suffered abuse and torture including beatings and starvation.

Released just as the “International Support Group” of countries, including Britain, were preparing to convene later this week at the United Nations in New York to try to revive efforts to forge plans for a political transition in Syria, the report by Human Rights Watch demanded that any settlement include provisions to make the regime of President Bashar al-Assad accountable for the long-hidden horrors.

Researchers gained access to more than 52,000 photographs purportedly showing deaths inside Syrian prisons that had been smuggled out in August 2013 by a defector known as “Caesar”. His real name has never been revealed.

At the time, the images gave the world a new, dreadful glimpse of the brutality of the regime of Mr Assad and helped to spur calls in the West for his removal from power.

Caesar has been among those to have briefed members of the US Congress about the dire conditions inside the regime detention centres, among them the feared 601 Military Hospital in Mezze, a suburb of Damascus. The new, 86-page report confirms that some of Caesar’s photographs show the dead being taken to its courtyard.

By focusing on just over half those photographs, cross-referencing them with other available evidence and speaking to 36 former detainees who were in the prisons and military hospitals where Caesar said they were taken as well as relatives and friends of the victims, the researchers said they could verify their authenticity.

“Many of the former detainees who were held in these nightmarish conditions told us they often wished they would die, rather than continue suffering,” Nadim Houry, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said last night. “They begged countries involved in seeking a peace process to do everything they can to help the people still being held in Syria.”

The report also insisted that any transition plan must require the regime to provide immediate access for international monitors to the detention centres.

Among 27 families who lost loved ones, only two said they had received death certificates and been given their bodies. Among the “disappeared” was a 14-year-old boy.

The US and Russia confirmed that international meeting on a political transition will go ahead in New York tomorrow, even though deep differences remained after talks in Moscow between President Vladimir Putin and US Secretary of State John Kerry. There is still no agreement on how quickly Mr Assad has to be removed from power, with Moscow still arguing that his remaining in Damascus will be vital to achieving a settlement.

There have been signs in recent weeks of some slippage in the resolve of the US and its allies to set the instant removal of Mr Assad as a condition for starting a political transition process. The release of today's report may or may not stiffen that resolve.