Tied face-down to a cross and whipped with cables for hours on end, a detainee held by Syrian rebel fighters was beaten every few days for more than three weeks, according to a report released by an international human rights group on Monday.

The detainee said the opposition fighters wanted him to admit to killing several people with a knife, and five of them would beat him “every two or three days.”

“The first time they hit me for about an hour,” he told officials with U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, who were on a fact-finding mission to Syria in August. “The third time they hit me from early in the morning until noon.”

Human Rights Watch report

He eventually confessed to the murders, even though he didn’t commit them.

Monday’s report called for the end to the use of torture and execution in the northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo and the coastal region of Latakia by the Free Syrian Army. It called the abuses hypocritical considering why opposition forces rose up against the regime of President Bashar Assad.

“Time and again Syria’s opposition has told us that it is fighting against the government because of its abhorrent human rights violations,” said Nadim Houry, deputy Middle East director for the organization, in the report. “Now it’s time for the opposition to show that they really mean what they say.”

The 18-month-long conflict has killed more than 20,000 people and uprooted about 1.2 million.

Last month, a panel appointed by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council concluded in its report that anti-government armed groups committed war crimes — including murder, extrajudicial killings and torture — but at a lesser frequency and scale than government forces, according to the Associated Press.

Detainees interviewed by Human Rights Watch officials in the Aleppo region complained of being whipped on the soles of their feet for hours at a time — sometimes with sticks and while blindfolded — while rebel soldiers grilled them for information.

When shown the evidence of the extrajudicial killings, some opposition leaders said that those who died deserved to be killed, according to Human Rights Watch.

The Human Rights Watch report came the same day as the UN updated its confidential list of Syrian and military units suspected of committing war crimes during the conflict.

Human rights investigators, led by Brazilian Paulo Pinheiro, said they had gathered “a formidable and extraordinary body of evidence” in a report presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva Monday. They urged the UN Security Council to refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court, Reuters reported

Pinheiro’s report, completed last month, says both government and anti-government forces committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. Pinheiro said the evidence collected, including the names of individuals and military units, could support future action by national or international courts.

During the meeting Monday, Canadian officials condemned the “deplorable and senseless violence,” and called for access to lifesaving assistance to those in need, according to the UN website.

“Canada calls on all parties to end the violence, to respect human rights and to respect international humanitarian law,” a Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.

While Canada and other nations, including France and Britain, want Syria to be brought before The Hague-based UN war crimes court, it will only happen with the acceptance of Russia and China.

Russia has been Assad’s strongest backer at the Security Council and has vetoed, along with China, any attempt by Western nations to condemn Assad’s government in its battle with the rebels. Russian officials have condemned opposition forces for their “terrorist acts,” use of torture and extrajudicial and summary execution.

“There are jihadist mercenaries fighting on the opposition side,” Russian diplomat Maria Khodynskaya-Golenishcheva told Reuters. “Those who, in the view of some states, are bringing democracy to the region are in actual fact carrying out mass murder.”

The Human Rights Watch report backed up Russia’s claims about rebel forces executing prisoners. A YouTube video shows four members of the al-Barri family being executed by rebels on July 31, hours after they were allegedly involved in killing 15 opposition fighters. Two Aleppo opposition officials confirmed the executions but said the four men were put on trial first.

Human Rights Watch was unable to confirm whether the men received a fair trial before execution — no trial records were kept, according another rebel official.

Another 16 videos that appear to show extrajudicial executions, including one from Sept. 10 showing the execution of 21 government soldiers in Aleppo, could not be authenticated by the human rights group. However, they were noted in Pinheiro’s report to the UN.

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Also on Monday, missiles fired by Syrian warplanes hit Lebanese territory in a serious cross-border violation, security officials in Beirut said. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said four missiles fired by two Syrian jets hit a remote area on the edge of the Lebanese border town of Arsal. No casualties were immediately reported.

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman ordered an investigation into the shelling, without openly blaming Syria.

With files from Star wire services

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