Tens of thousands of corpses in Syrian mass graves, according to the Advocacy Group

Tens of thousands of corpses in Syrian mass graves, according to the Advocacy Group

In Syria, people begin to discover mass graves across the country, which illuminates the extent of the atrocities, which during the brutal rule of crashed dictator bashar al-assad . More than two weeks after Assad's escape from Syria and the collapse of his regime, numerous Syrian families have no answers to the question, What has happened with their relatives after their detention by Assad's secret police.

mass graves and their discovery

according to Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force (Setf), an anti-assadic organization in the USA, could hundreds of thousands of corpses of people who from the Assad regime " to death "in a mass grave east of Damascus. After years of commitment to uncovering mass graves, Moustafa was finally able to visit suspicious places after Assad's case.

Details of the mass graves

The alleged mass grid in the city of Quayfah, about 45 kilometers from Damascus, is characterized by ditches, which are 6-7 meters deep, 3-4 meters wide and 50-150 meters long, according to the setf. Moustafa reported that undertaker who worked at this location had told him that “four trucks, each loaded with over 150 corpses, came twice a week from 2012 to 2018.” That would result in hundreds of thousands of corpses.

reports on torture and forced burials

"The driver of the excavator Excavator described how intelligence officers forced the workers to use the excavator to smooth and compress the corpse so that they could be buried more easily before the next row or the next ditch was dug," said Moustafa. On Monday, reports of more than 20 corpses were known in a mass grave north of Izraa in the province of Daraa in southern Syria.

Videos of the Agence France press news agency show men who pull the ditch and bones out of the soil. Another video shows two rows with covered corpses that lie on the floor while an excavator gently tries to remove the top layer of earth.

missing persons and their families

About 150,000 people in Syria are considered missing, most of them have been kidnapped or imprisoned by the Assad regime or its allies, reports the international commission for missing persons (ICMP) . This number cannot be verified by CNN independently.

testimonies about mass graves

In 2020, a man, known as “Der Dodengräber”, reported in front of German courts that he was recruited by the Assad regime to bury hundreds of corpses in mass graves. According to the ICMP, the corpses were Syrians from various detention centers. The witness explained that together with others he escorted several trucks, "which were loaded with 300 to 700 corpses that were brought to the mass graves in Qatayfah four times a week north of Damascus and Al-Najha in the south." The corpses could only be identified on the basis of the numbers engraved on their breasts or foreheads and showed severe signs of torture and mutilation.

steps to identify and justice

MOUSTAFA of the SETF is aware of at least eight mass grabs in Syria and asks international experts to get into the country to help with the exhumation and identification of corpses. Jenifer Fenton, the spokeswoman for the UN special envoy for Syria, recently emphasized that the documentation for custody locations and mass graves “must be secured to help the families in their search for justice and responsibility.”

"We have to prioritize the count of the missing person and make sure that the families receive the clarity and recognition that they need desperately," she said in a press conference.

family stories and grief

A family member, Hazem Dakel from Idlib, who now lives in Sweden, told about his uncle Najeeb, who was arrested in 2012 and whose death was later confirmed by the family. The regime arrested his brother Amer the following year. Former prisoners from the notorious Saydnaya prison near Damascus reported that Amer had disappeared there in mid -April 2015 after he had been tortured. However, the regime never recognized his death. The family is now “certain” that Amer died under torture in Saydnaya, Dakel wrote on Facebook.

In the middle of the celebrations about Assad's fall, there is also great suffering among the families of the missing. "They mourn their children," said Dakel. "Yes, the regime fell after resistance and struggle, but there was grief - how, where are our children?"

Eyad Kourdi and Raja Razek contributed to this report.