27 May, 2017
"Today we heard the statement from the US State Department concerning the fate of the Syrian prisoners", he said.
On Monday, the U.S. State Department announced that Assad had set up a crematorium next to Saydnaya Military Prison, where thousands have been executed since the start of the war. He accused President Bashar Assad's government of sinking "to a new level of depravity".
The Syrian government forcefully rejected on Tuesday accusations by the United States that the bodies of thousands of political prisoners had been disposed of in a crematory at a prison near Damascus, describing the allegations as "lies" to justify USA aggression. He highlighted the melting snow on top of the roof as proof that the building is kept at a higher temperature than the other buildings.
When asked what the Trump administration plans to do with the information, Jones said, "At this point, we are talking about this evidence and bringing it forward to the global community, which we hope will put pressure on the regime to change its behavior".
More than 310,000 people have been killed and millions have fled their homes since the conflict began with anti-Assad protests.
"According to numerous NGOs, the regime has abducted and detained between 65,000 and 117,000 people between 2011 and 2015".
Thousands of prisoners are held in the prison, one of the country's largest detention centers, located 30 kilometers north of Damascus.
Austin Tice, who served as an infantry officer in the Marine Corps, was abducted in August 2012 in Darayya, a suburb of Damascus, three months after he entered the country, according to the USA government.
More than 400,000 people have been killed since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, according to an estimate released a year ago by Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations and Arab League envoy to Syria.
Others are buried in mass graves that mark the dead with numbers instead of names, he said.
Jones also said that the United States thinks that the crematorium will serve to hide evidence of mass murder in the prison and that Washington will present evidence of the crematorium's existence to the global community.
Yesterday, the USA said it has evidence President Assad's government has built a crematorium at Sednaya, the large military prison outside the capital Damascus. Numerous bodies, it said, are then being burned in the crematorium. "Russia", Jones said. He wouldn't confirm whether the United States will take military action in response to the grisly discovery of the crematorium.
Galant said that as bad as Syria was, it was just a minor player in the drama of evil unfolding in the Middle East - and that when Assad was gone, the next target needed to be his sponsor, Iran. "In light of the failures of the past ceasefire agreements, we have reason to be skeptical", he said.