A report by Amnesty International says torture in Syria has risen to nightmarish levels and those responsible must be punished.

Neil Sammonds, Amnesty International's researcher on Syria and author of the report explained that this report was based on research in Jordan where they spoke to refugees coming across the border, 25 of whom claimed they had been detained and spoke of torture and ill treatment.

He said that they cross checked the accounts through records of arrests and forensic examination of photographs of bodies.

Neil Sammonds said that there were now 270 cases of deaths under suspicious circumstances in Syria.

He desribed how "almost everyone suffers extreme beatings", including being stripped to underwear and being beaten on arrival to detention centres by so-called "welcome parties".

He went on to detail the use of torture instruments and electric shocks, adding that they were now seeing "a lot more violence against detainees without questioning" whereas previously false confessions would have been illicited by government security.

Ammar Waqqaf, member of the Syrian Social Club, said while he did not dispute the allegations of abuse by the Syrian government, he urged Amnesty to examine the "thousands of victims detained by the Free Syrian Army".

He said that he gets reports of kidnap and rape but Neil Sammonds said that while they also examined these claims of violence by the Free Syrian Army, "the scale if abuse is massively difference".

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