Syrian mass graves reveal ‘demise machine’ below Assad, legal professional common says By Reuters

By Timour Azhari and Anthony Deutsch

QUTAYFAH, Syria (Reuters) – A global battle crimes prosecutor mentioned on Tuesday that proof from mass grave websites in Syria revealed a state-run “demise machine” below the rule of ousted chief Bashar al- Assad, through which he estimated the variety of folks to be greater than 100,000. have been tortured and murdered since 2013.

Talking after visiting two mass graves within the cities of Qutayfah and Najha, close to Damascus, former US battle crimes ambassador Stephen Rapp informed Reuters: “We actually have greater than 100,000 individuals who have disappeared and have been tortured to demise on this machine.

“I don’t have a lot doubt about these sorts of numbers given what we noticed in these mass graves.”

“We actually have not seen something like this because the Nazis got here,” mentioned Rapp, who led battle crimes prosecutions in Rwanda and Sierra Leone and works with Syrian civil society to doc proof of battle crimes and helps put together for any eventuality. attainable exams.

“From the key police who disappeared folks from their streets and houses, to the jailers and interrogators who starved them and tortured them to demise, to the truckers and bulldozer drivers who hid their our bodies, 1000’s of “Folks have been working on this system of killing,” Rapp mentioned.

“We’re speaking a couple of system of state terror, which has turn into a machine of demise.”

A whole lot of 1000’s of Syrians are estimated to have been killed since 2011, when a crackdown on protests in opposition to Assad escalated right into a full-scale battle.

Assad and his father Hafez, who preceded him as president and died in 2000, have lengthy been accused by rights teams and governments of widespread extrajudicial killings, together with mass executions inside the jail system of the nation and the usage of chemical weapons in opposition to the Syrian folks.

Assad, who fled to Moscow, has repeatedly denied his authorities dedicated human rights abuses and portrayed his critics as extremists.

The top of the US-based Syrian Rights Group, Mouaz Moustafa, who additionally visited Qutayfah, 40 km north of Damascus, estimated that at the very least 100,000 our bodies had been buried simply there.

“SQUARE OF HORRORS”

The Worldwide Fee on Lacking Individuals in The Hague individually mentioned it had acquired knowledge indicating there may very well be as many as 66 mass grave websites, not but verified, in Syria. Greater than 157,000 folks have been reported lacking on the fee.

Fee President Kathryne Bomberger informed Reuters that its portal for reporting disappearances was now “exploding” with new contacts with households.

For comparability, round 40,000 folks disappeared in the course of the Balkan wars of the Nineteen Nineties.

For households, the seek for the reality in Syria may very well be lengthy and troublesome. A DNA match would require at the very least three relations to supply reference DNA samples and take a DNA pattern from every of these skeletal stays discovered within the graves, Bomberger mentioned.

The fee requested that the websites be protected in order that proof may very well be preserved for attainable trials, however the mass grave websites have been simply accessible Tuesday.

The US is working with quite a lot of U.N. businesses to make sure the Syrian folks get solutions and accountability, the State Division mentioned Tuesday.

Syrian residents residing close to Qutayfah, a former navy base the place one of many websites was positioned, and a cemetery in Najha used to cover our bodies from locations of detention, mentioned they noticed a relentless circulate of refrigerated vehicles delivering the our bodies which have been thrown into lengthy trenches dug with a bulldozer.

“The graves have been ready in an organized manner: the truck would arrive, unload its cargo and depart. There have been safety automobiles with them, and nobody was allowed to method, anybody who approached would get off with them,” Abb (ST:) Khalid, who works as a farmer close to the Najha cemetery, mentioned.

In Qutayfah, residents refused to talk on digicam or use their names for concern of reprisals, saying they weren’t but certain the realm was secure after Assad’s fall.

“That is the place of horrors,” one among them mentioned on Tuesday.

Inside a website surrounded by cement partitions, three youngsters performed close to a Russian-made navy satellite tv for pc automobile. The bottom was flat and stage, with lengthy straight marks the place the our bodies have been imagined to be buried.

SATELLITE IMAGERY

Satellite tv for pc photos analyzed by Reuters confirmed that large-scale excavations started on the website between 2012 and 2014 and continued till 2022. A number of satellite tv for pc photos taken by Maxar throughout this era confirmed an excavator and enormous trenches seen on the location, in addition to three or 4 massive trenches. vehicles.

Omar Hujeirati, a former anti-Assad protest chief who lives close to the Najha cemetery, which was used till the creation of the bigger Qutayfah website as a result of it was full, mentioned he suspected that a number of Lacking relations could also be within the grave.

He believes at the very least a few of these arrested, together with two sons and 4 brothers, have been arrested for protesting in opposition to Assad’s authorities.

“That is my sin, that is what made them take my household,” he mentioned, behind him a protracted uncovered trench the place the our bodies would have been buried.

Particulars of the Syrian mass graves have been first revealed in German court docket hearings and testimony to the US Congress in 2021 and 2023. A person recognized solely as “the gravedigger” testified repeatedly as a witness on his work on the websites of Najha and Qutayfah in the course of the German trial of the Syrians. authorities officers.

Whereas working in cemeteries round Damascus in late 2011, two intelligence brokers confirmed up at his workplace and ordered him and his colleagues to move and bury the corpses. He testified that he rode in a van embellished with images of Assad and visited the websites a number of occasions per week between 2011 and 2018, adopted by massive refrigerated vehicles crammed with corpses.

The vehicles have been transporting a number of hundred corpses from navy hospitals in Tishreen, Mezzeh and Harasta to Najha and Qutayfah, he mentioned in the course of the trial. On the websites, deep trenches have been already dug and the gravedigger and his colleagues unloaded the corpses into the trenches, which might be coated with earth by the excavators as quickly as a piece of the ditch was full, he defined.

“Each week, twice per week, three tractor-trailers arrived, crammed with 300 to 600 our bodies of victims of torture, hunger and execution, from navy hospitals and intelligence providers round Damascus,” he mentioned. he informed Congress in a written assertion.

The gravedigger fled Syria to Europe in 2018 and has testified repeatedly concerning the mass graves, however at all times maintaining his identification hidden from the general public and media.