He led the Air Force Intelligence and oversaw a network of detention facilities including the notorious Mezzeh Prison, where detainees were routinely tortured.

It’s unacceptable that severely incapacitated people stagger about like ghosts, their bodies twisted and tortured, their eyes vacant.

Backed by Russia and Iran, the Assad regime is believed to have killed tens of thousands of people, while many more were tortured in crowded, dismal secret prisons.

More than 300 have been ill-treated or tortured, the organisation says, including dozens of members of the media.

Syria’s new leaders have promised justice for a population that had been terrorized for decades by a government that imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, killed and used sexual violence as a weapon of war.