Istanbul ( CNN ) -- `` Basat al reeh . '' `` Dulab . '' `` Falaqa . '' They are Arabic names for torture techniques that send chills through the hearts of Syrians , particularly the untold thousands who are believed to have been detained during the uprising of the last 15 months . `` We suffered torture all the time , '' said Tariq , an opposition activist from the port city of Latakia who spent 40 days in solitary confinement in spring 2011 . He told CNN he endured `` dulab , '' in which torturers force the prisoner 's legs and head into a car tire before beating them , and `` basat al reeh , '' in which the prisoner is tied to a board and beaten . `` They threw cold water on our naked bodies and they also urinated on us ... they are really good at what they do , '' said Tariq , who now is in Turkey helping mobilize men and weapons to rebels inside Syria . According to a report published Tuesday by the New York-based human rights organization Human Rights Watch , the Syrian government has been carrying out `` a state policy of torture '' as part of an effort to crush dissent throughout the unrest . Human Rights Watch identified 27 detention centers across Syria where torture was systematically inflicted on prisoners , according to testimonies from more than 200 former prisoners and security officers who defected . Rights group cites 'state policy of torture ' in Syria as stream of defectors reported . `` It is a network of torture chambers that the authorities are using to intimidate and punish people who dare to oppose the government , '' said Ole Solvang , a Human Rights Watch researcher . `` Nobody knows how many people are being detained , how many are being tortured , '' he added . `` But one local activist group has collected names of 25,000 people in detention . The numbers are absolutely staggering . '' Human Rights Watch titled its report `` The Torture Archipelago '' in an overt attempt to link the Syrian prison system to the notorious Siberian gulags described in Alexander Solzhenitsyn 's Soviet dissident novel `` The Gulag Archipelago . '' The system is being run by at least four intelligence agencies collectively referred to as mukhabarat , or secret police , the report says . Those agencies include the Department of Military Intelligence , the Political Security Directorate , the General Intelligence Directorate and the Air Force Intelligence Directorate . `` The authorities also established numerous temporary unofficial holding centers in places such as stadiums , military bases , schools and hospitals where the authorities rounded up and held people during massive detention campaigns before transporting them to branches of the intelligence agencies , '' Human Rights Watch reported . The Syrian government routinely denies allegations of such abuses . Recently , Syria 's ambassador to the United Nations walked out of a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council in protest after the Syrian regime was accused of committing crimes against humanity . But the eyewitness accounts gathered by Human Rights Watch as well as by CNN throughout the 15-month crisis are overwhelming . Though most of the torture victims in Human Rights Watch 's report were men ranging from 18 to 35 years of age , the organization also interviewed women , senior citizens and children who said they were tortured . `` They electrocuted me on my stomach , with a prod . I fell unconscious , '' said Hossam , a 13-year-old boy who told Human Rights Watch he was detained in the town of Tal Kalakh in May 2011 . `` When they interrogated me the second time , they beat me and electrocuted me again . Clinton : World may not succeed in Syria . `` The third time , they had some pliers and they pulled out my toenail . They said , 'Remember this saying , always keep it in mind : We take both kids and adults , and we killed them both . ' I started to cry , and they returned me to the cell . '' CNN has also interviewed more than a dozen Syrians who described enduring beatings , electrocution and horribly crowded conditions in prison cells . A dentist who was arrested for secretly providing medical care to wounded demonstrators told CNN in February that he endured beatings , near-drownings in buckets of toilet water and electric shocks to his genitals during 45 days in a prison cell that was built for 60 people but held 130 prisoners . `` They started beating me and asked me , 'Who did you help ? ' `` the dentist recounted . `` I said , ' I helped an old lady . ' Then they started beating me even harder . '' The accounts of brutality match those shared by a former mukhabarat officer who said he was repeatedly ordered to torture prisoners until he defected and fled to Turkey with his family last year . `` Whatever we wanted the prisoner to say , he would say . Not what he wanted to say , whatever we ordered him to say , '' said the former officer , who spoke to CNN outside a refugee camp in Turkey where he had been living for months . `` We took their fingernails out with pliers and we made them eat them . We made them suck their own blood of the floor , '' the officer added . Photos : In Syrian hospital , no escape from war . The officer 's descriptions of the detention facility where he worked in Damascus matched the descriptions of a former prisoner who had spent months incarcerated in the same building . That former prisoner 's finger was still mangled after it was crushed during a torture session in the Damascus facility . The officer said prison guards used grim humor during their interrogation sessions . `` We would bring the prisoner and put him in the 'basat al reeh ' or the 'dulab ' and start beating him , '' he said . `` He would scream 'for God 's sake , ' and we would say OK , bring the 'for God 's sake ' stick . He would scream 'for my mother , please '' or 'for [ the prophet ] Mohammed . ' And we would bring the 'my mother ' stick and the 'for Mohammed ' stick . Every stick had a name . '' `` At the core , the crisis in Syria is about human rights violations , '' said Solvang , who has traveled into Syria to gather evidence and testimony for `` Torture Archipelago . '' `` That is what is driving the crisis and driving people to take up arms . '' The Human Rights Watch report includes satellite maps showing the exact location of detention centers . It also lists the names of commanders of individual detention centers . Human Rights Watch is urging the U.N. Security Council to refer Syrian officials to the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity . `` Those who commit these abuses do so with complete impunity , thinking they will never have to answer for this , '' Solvang said . `` By publishing these names , we are really putting them on notice , saying they will have to answer for these violations . '' Syrian military defector : 'Those who were injected are lucky ' Journalist Omar al Muqdad contributed to this report .
Human Rights Watch has released a report on Syria 's `` state policy of torture '' The report includes testimony from former prisoners , security officers . Among the victims , the report says , are women , senior citizens and children . Syria 's government routinely denies allegations of such abuse .