Syrian mass graves reveal “death machines” during the Assad era (Reuters)

Written by Taimur Azhari and Anthony Deutsch

QATIFA, Syria (Reuters) – Evidence excavated from mass grave sites in Syria has revealed a state-run “death machine” under ousted President Bashar al-Assad in which the death toll is estimated at more than 100,000 people, the international war crimes prosecutor said on Tuesday. . They have been tortured and killed since 2013.

“We definitely have more than 100,000 people who have disappeared and been tortured to death in this machine,” former US war crimes ambassador-at-large Stephen Rapp, after visiting two mass grave sites in the towns of Qatifah and Najha near Damascus, told Reuters.

“I don’t have much doubt about these numbers given what we saw in these mass graves.”

“We haven’t seen anything quite like this since the Nazis,” said Raab, who has led prosecutions at war crimes tribunals in Rwanda and Sierra Leone, and works with Syrian civil society to document evidence of war crimes and helps prepare for anything. Final trials.

“From the secret police who disappeared people from the streets and homes, to the jailers and interrogators who starved and tortured them to death, to the truck drivers and bulldozer drivers who hid their bodies, thousands of people were working in this system of killing,” Raab said.

“We are talking about a state terror regime that has become a death machine.”

It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed since 2011, when Assad’s crackdown on protests against him turned into a full-scale war.

Human rights groups and governments have long accused Assad and his father Hafez, who preceded him as president and died in 2000, of committing widespread extrajudicial killings, including mass executions within the country’s prison system and using chemical weapons against the Syrian people.

Assad, who fled to Moscow, has repeatedly denied that his government committed human rights abuses and portrayed his critics as extremists.

The head of the US-based Syrian advocacy organization Syria Emergency Task Force, Moaz Mustafa, who visited Qatifah, 25 miles (40 km) north of Damascus, estimated that at least 100,000 bodies were buried there alone.

“place of horror”

The International Committee on Missing Persons in The Hague said separately that it had received data indicating there may be up to 66 mass grave sites in Syria that have not yet been verified. More than 157,000 people were reported missing to the committee.

Committee chair Catherine Bomberger told Reuters that its missing persons reporting portal was now “thriving” with new contacts from families of missing persons.

In comparison, nearly 40,000 people were lost during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

For families, the search for the truth in Syria can be long and difficult. Bomberger said DNA matching would require at least three relatives to provide reference DNA samples and take a DNA sample from all of the skeletal remains found in the graves.

The committee called for the sites to be protected so evidence is preserved for potential prosecutions, but the mass grave sites were easily accessible on Tuesday.

The US State Department said on Tuesday that the United States is working with a number of UN bodies to ensure that the Syrian people receive answers and accountability.

Syrian residents living near Al-Qutayfa, a former military base where one of the sites is located, and a cemetery in Najha used to hide bodies from detention sites, described seeing a steady stream of refrigerated trucks transporting bodies that had been thrown into long trenches dug by bulldozers.

“The graves were prepared in an organized manner. The truck would come, unload its cargo, and leave. They had security cars with them, and no one was allowed to approach, and everyone who approached would get out with them.” ” dad (Sh:) says Khaled, who works as a farmer near the Nagha cemetery.

In Qutaifa, residents refused to speak on camera or use their names for fear of retaliation, saying they were not yet sure that the area was safe after the fall of Assad.

“This is a place of horror,” one said Tuesday.

Inside a site surrounded by cement walls, three children were playing near a Russian-made military spacecraft. The soil was flat and level, with long straight marks where bodies were believed to have been buried.

Satellite images

Satellite images analyzed by Reuters showed extensive excavation that began at the site between 2012 and 2014 and continued until 2022. Multiple satellite images taken by Maxar during that period showed a large excavation and trenches visible at the site, along with three or four large satellites. Trucks.

Omar Hujirati, a former anti-Assad protest leader who lives near the Al-Najah cemetery, which until the construction of the larger Al-Qutifah site was being used because it was full, said he suspected several missing members of his family might be in the grave.

It is believed that at least some of the detainees, including two sons and four brothers, were arrested for protesting against the Assad government.

“It was my sin that made them take my family,” he said, standing behind him in a long, open trench where the bodies were apparently buried.

Details of mass graves in Syria first emerged during German court hearings and US Congressional testimony in 2021 and 2023. A man identified only as “The Gravedigger” repeatedly testified as a witness about his work at the Al-Najah and Al-Qutayfa sites during the German trial of the Syrians. Government officials.

While working in the cemeteries surrounding Damascus at the end of 2011, two intelligence officers came to his office and ordered him and his colleagues to transport the bodies and bury them. He testified that he rode a truck decorated with images of Assad and drove to the sites several times a week between 2011 and 2018, followed by large refrigerated trucks filled with bodies.

He said at the trial that the trucks carried several hundred bodies from the Tishreen, Mezzeh, and Harasta military hospitals to Najana and Qatifa. He added that deep trenches have already been dug at the sites, and the excavator and his colleagues are unloading the bodies into the trenches, which the excavators will cover with dirt once part of the trench is filled.

“Every week, twice a week, three trucks loaded with between 300 and 600 bodies of victims of torture, famine and execution arrive from military hospitals and intelligence branches around Damascus,” he told Congress in a written statement.

The gravedigger fled Syria for Europe in 2018 and has repeatedly testified about mass graves, but always with his identity hidden from the public and media.