Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps he plans to take to support access for independent monitors to (a) places of detention in Syria and (b) Saydnaya prison.

I condemn the Asad regime’s arbitrary arrest, illegal detention and mistreatment of tens of thousands of Syrians and call for the release of all those arbitrarily detained, especially women and children, in accordance with UN Security Council Resolutions 2254 and 2268.

I fully support calls for access for independent monitors to all places of detention in Syria, including the regime’s notorious Saydnaya prison. The Government has sought to keep international focus on this issue, particularly via the UN. We have ensured that detention and mistreatment has featured in successive Syria resolutions of the UN Security Council and Human Rights Council, and will continue to do so. We also regularly raise detainee issues at the Task Forces of the International Syria Support Group in Geneva.