Syrians are starting to uncover mass graves across the country, shedding light on the magnitude of atrocities committed during the brutal rule of ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad. <\/p>\n
More than two weeks after Assad fled Syria and his regime collapsed, scores of Syrian families still have no answer about what happened to their loved ones following their detention by Assad\u2019s secret police. <\/p>\n
Hundreds of thousands of bodies of people \u201ctortured to death by the Assad regime\u201d could be buried in a mass grave east of Damascus, according to Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the US-based Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), an anti-Assad advocacy group. <\/p>\n
The alleged mass grave site in the city of Qutayfah, about 45 kilometers (28 miles) from Damascus, is marked by trenches 6-7 meters (19-23 feet) deep, 3-4 meters wide, and 50-150 meters long, according to SETF. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe bulldozer excavator driver described how intelligence officers forced workers to use the bulldozer to flatten and compress the bodies to make them fit and easier to bury before digging the next line\/trench,\u201d Moustafa said. <\/p>\n
On Monday, reports emerged of more than 20 bodies found in a mass grave north of Izraa in Daraa governorate, southern Syria. <\/p>\n
Videos from the Agence France-Presse news agency show men digging and pulling bones from the dirt. Another shows two rows of covered bodies lying on the ground and a bulldozer gently trying to dig the top layer of the soil. <\/p>\n
In 2020, a man known as \u201cthe Gravedigger\u201d told a German court he was recruited by the Assad regime to bury hundreds of bodies in mass graves, according to the ICMP. <\/p>\n
The bodies were those of Syrians from various detention centers, the witness told a trial of former Syrian intelligence officers. The man said that, along with others, he would escort multiple trucks, \u201cloaded with anywhere between 300-700 corpses to mass graves in Qatayfah north of Damascus and al-Najha to the south four times a week. The bodies could only be identified by the numbers etched on their chests or foreheads and exhibited severe signs of torture and mutilation,\u201d according to ICMP. <\/p>\n
SETF\u2019s Moustafa said he is aware of at least eight mass grave sites in Syria. He also urged international experts to come to the country to help with the process of exhuming and identifying bodies. <\/p>\n
Jenifer Fenton, the spokesperson for the United Nations\u2019 special envoy to Syria, said last week that related documentation to detention site and mass graves \u201cmust be secured to aid families in their search for justice and accountability.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWe must prioritize accounting for the missing, ensuring the families receive the clarity and recognition they desperately need,\u201d she said in a press briefing. <\/p>\n
One of those family members is Hazem Dakel from Idlib, who now lives in Sweden. <\/p>\n
Dakel said his uncle Najeeb was arrested in 2012 and it was later confirmed by the family as having been killed. His brother Amer was detained the following year, he said. Former detainees at the notorious Saydnaya prison near Damascus said Amer had disappeared in mid-April 2015 after being tortured there. But the regime never acknowledged his death. <\/p>\n
The family is now \u201ccertain\u201d Amer died under torture in Saydnaya, Dakel posted on Facebook. <\/p>\n
Amid the celebrations of Assad\u2019s fall there\u2019s also been great sadness among families of those who went missing. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey are mourning their children,\u201d Dakel said. \u201cYes, the regime fell after resistance and struggle, but there was sorrow \u2013 like, where are our children?\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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