Health care workers who treated injured anti-government protesters in Syria were more likely to be detained, forcibly disappeared or killed at the hands of the regime in the early years of the devastating conflict, a new report from Physicians for Human Rights found. 

The New York-based advocacy group described its latest report on the criminalization of medical care as an “unprecedented look at the Syrian government’s use of detention, torture, and disappearance both to punish health care workers and to reduce access to health services for peaceful protesters across the country.”

Researchers analyzed the cases of 1,644 health care workers jailed between January 2011 and December 2012 and found that detained health workers who provided medical care to protesters were 91% less likely to be released than medical personnel who were arrested for their political activities. They were also 400% more likely to die in detention and had 550% higher odds of being forcibly disappeared. 

The researchers also conducted interviews with former members of Noor al-Hayat, a Syrian medical group that provided first aid and emergency medical care during peaceful demonstrations in the city of Aleppo in 2012. Within a year of the group’s founding, six of its 13 members had been detained and four reportedly died from torture.