Hundreds of thousands of bodies could be buried in mass graves in Syria, advocacy group says
Syrians are beginning to discover mass graves across the country, revealing the extent of the atrocities committed during ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad’s brutal rule.
More than two weeks after Assad fled Syria and the fall of his regime, many Syrian families still don’t know what happened to their loved ones after they were detained by Assad’s secret police.
Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the US-based Syria Emergency Task Force (SETF), said the bodies of hundreds of thousands of people “tortured to death by the Assad regime” may be buried east of Damascus in mass graves.
Mustafa told CNN that after years of work uncovering mass graves, he was finally able to visit suspected sites after Assad’s fall.
The so-called mass grave, located in the city of Qutaifah, about 45 kilometers (28 miles) from Damascus, contains trenches 6-7 meters (19-23 feet) deep, 3-4 meters wide and 50-150 meters long , according to SETF.
Mustafa said gravediggers working at the site told him that “from 2012 to 2018, four trailers, each carrying more than 150 bodies, came twice a week,” he told CNN TV News Network, that would amount to hundreds of thousands of corpses.
On the road leading to Damascus International Airport in the Syrian capital Damascus on Monday, workers were clearing an undiscovered mass grave believed to contain the remains of civilians killed by the ousted Assad regime. – Abdulkarem Mohammed/Anadolu/Getty Images
“The bulldozer excavator driver described how intelligence officers forced staff to use bulldozers to flatten and compress the bodies to make them fit and easier to bury before digging the next line/trench,” Mustafa said.
On Monday, reports emerged that more than 20 bodies had been found in a mass grave north of Izra in Syria’s southern Daraa province.
AFP footage showed people digging in the dirt and pulling out bones. Another photo showed two rows of covered bodies lying on the ground as a bulldozer gently tried to dig up the topsoil.
According to the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), approximately 150,000 people are missing in Syria, most of whom have been kidnapped or detained by the Assad regime or its affiliates. CNN could not independently verify that number.
Organization identified by numbers
In 2020, a man known as the “Gravedigger” told a German court that he was recruited by the Assad regime to bury hundreds of bodies in mass graves, ICMP reported.
Witnesses at the trial of a former Syrian intelligence officer said the bodies were those of Syrians from various detention centres. The man said he would join others in escorting multiple trucks “four times a week to the mass graves in Qatayfah in the north and al-Najha in the south of Damascus carrying between 300 and 700 bodies. The bodies can only be seen through the carvings on the They are identified by numbers on their chests or foreheads and show severe signs of torture and mutilation.
SETF’s Mustafa said he knew of at least eight mass graves in Syria. He also urged international experts to come to the country to help with the process of exhuming and identifying the bodies.
Members of Syria’s “White Helmets” civil defense forces work in a mass grave on Tuesday in the Baghdad Bridge area outside the Syrian capital Damascus, where civilians believed to have been killed by those who overthrew the regime of Bashar al-Assad were found corpse. – Emin Sansal/Anadolu/Getty Images
“Documents related to detention sites and mass graves must be secured to help families seek justice and accountability,” Jennifer Fenton, spokesperson for the UN special envoy to Syria, said last week.
“We must prioritize the whereabouts of missing people and ensure families receive the clarity and recognition they desperately need,” she told a news conference.
One such family member is Hazem Dakel from Idlib, who now lives in Sweden.
Dacre said his uncle Najib was arrested in 2012 and later confirmed to have been killed by his family. His brother Amir was detained the following year, he said. Former detainees at the notorious Saidnaya prison near Damascus said Amer disappeared in mid-April 2015 after being tortured there. But the regime never acknowledged his death.
Dakr posted on Facebook that the family is now “certain” that Amer died of torture in Saidnaya.
While celebrating Assad’s fall, families of the missing are also grieving.
“They’re mourning their children,” Dacre said. “Yes, the regime fell after resistance and struggle, but people are sad – like, where are our children?”
Eyad Kourdi and Raja Razek contributed to this report.
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