There is more evidence of Assad’s terrors than there is against the Nazis. The “mystery” of the Syrian graves

The branch of the “secret” Syrian Air Force collected the bodies in hospitals, “after they had been tortured to death”, and sent them in trucks twice a week to the supposed mass graves, “a secret that the regime left behind”

News of the discovery of common fences in Syria increase the fears of relatives of many thousands of people disappeared in political prisonsin a search that is just beginning and remains “a mystery” that the deposed regime left behind.

A week and a half after, on December 8, reports of discoveries of mass graves associated with the repression of the former security services in various parts of the country, one of which is enormous on the outskirts of Damascus.

But there is no confirmation from any official entity of the new authorities that took power in Syria and there remain many doubts about its origin, there is a lot of speculation and even fake news, but also reports of movements of former security forces near these locations and the circulation of refrigerated cargo vehicles in areas prohibited to the population.

100 thousand bodies: “conservative estimate” of one of 5 graves

In al-Qutayfah, about 40 kilometers north of the Syrian capital, the US-based Syrian Emergency Task Force on Tuesday discovered one of the country’s five large mass graves, where they were buried. more than one hundred thousand bodies“at a very conservative estimate” based on satellite data and testimony, according to its boss, Mouaz Mustafa, who visited the site after former president al-Assad left for Russia.

In this desert area on the outskirts of Damascus, there remain traces of storage of bodies without gravesbut few answers about the origin of those people, in a large area and closed by high walls, access to which is via an unmarked portico.

Inside, there are only two identified graves, and long parallel lines of around 150 meters long and three meters wide, framed by small cement curbs, and which appear to have been excavated previously. At least one of them is open and, under concrete covers, white bags full of bones are visible, with the name and a body number each contains, but no date.

“I don’t think it’s a mass grave, everything is too organized, it is too systematic and professional and Bashar al-Assad’s people were not going to spend their time and money burying people they despised“, says Marwa al-Farahan, 34, who has been looking for seven relatives for several years, all men, in a family that has become all-female.

“They are all missing and perhaps lost”, he laments in al-Qutayfah, where several people look for answers inside the bags and others protest the desecration of the place of the dead.

Contrary to information posted on social media, the “white helmets” of civil protection say they have not yet visited the location and have planned a trip to a suspicious area in the region. But just this Wednesday, on the outskirts of Damascus, where these discoveries have become increasingly frequent, the “white helmets” found several corpses inside a warehouse, estimating that the number of victims would be less than 20.

Like many Syrians since the collapse of more than 50 years of the Assad dynasty, Marwa Farahan has traveled in and around Damascus to every place of repression now freed from the old regime, including the Sednaya chainthe prison of the Palestinian section of the Syrian intelligence services, or even the Hezzeh military airbase, where around a thousand political prisoners were held when the forces of armed opposition rebel groups took over the capital.

According to the director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, it was precisely the branch of the “secret” Syrian Air Force that collected the bodies of victims in military hospitals, “after they had been tortured to death”, and which were then sent in trucks twice a week between 2012 and 2018 to the supposed mass graves. Corpses would also be transported by Damascus’ municipal funeral services, whose staff helped unload them from refrigerated trailers.

This description is in line with what a man who identifies himself as Ala al-Ali, 42 years old, who worked in the region in 2014, told Lusa, when “only Assad’s authorities could enter and no one knew what was going on inside” , but remembers the existence of a goods checkpoint nearby, which only allowed refrigerated trucks to pass through two or three times a week and always at night, without anyone knowing what they were transporting.

For this witness, it is easy to associate the confirmation of bones within those walls, when he can finally overcome them, “to the terrible things Assad did to his people and there are definitely more places like this“, he continues, noting that his 42 years are an equivocal age: “I’m ten days old and my life has just begun“, in a beginning that coincided with the end date of the dictatorship.

The terrors of “Assad’s slaughterhouse”

In recent days, other news of supposed mass graves and body dumps has accumulated. The discovery of the warehouse with around 20 corpses this Wednesday was made near the large prison complex of the same name, north of the capital, where they were imprisoned. around three thousand prisoners in sub-human conditionsmost of whom have no contact with their families and the outside world, not even the right to a lawyer and trial.

It was also a place of brutal treatments with torture instruments and of executions by hanging and also descriptions of bodies compressed and then dissolved in acidsand one of the main destinations for family searches for victims of the so-called “Assad’s slaughterhouse”.

More evidence than against the Nazis. “This anger could explode”

Sednaya prison was visited on Tuesday by the UN envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, where he faced the wrath of those close to the disappeared, many of whom were presumed dead, and left a warning: “If this process is not moving forward in the right direction, There is a huge danger that this anger could explode in a way that is in no one’s interests.”

In al-Qutayfah and other points where bodies were discovered, there were no signs this Wednesday of the presence of military or police from the new transitional authorities to prevent the destruction or alteration of evidence of possible crimes against humanity.

The former prosecutor of the international criminal court for Rwanda and former US war crimes representative, Stephen Rapp, said there are in Syria more evidence and documentary evidence than existed when senior Nazi leaders were tried in Nuremberg.

Following the triumph of rebel forces in Syria, the former US prosecutor has already visited, as part of his collaboration with the Syrian Emergency Task Force, al-Qutayfah and another suspicious site in Najha, on the southern outskirts of Damascus, and said that First-hand observation gives the opportunity to “confirm what was already known about the death machine that was maintained and operated by the Assad regime,” adding that “it is unthinkable that this is happening in the 21st century.”

“Mystery left behind by the regime”

New authorities in Damascus have set up a hotline for people and former prisoners to identify locations and secret prisons used by the Assad government to find any trace of missing people, following the release of thousands of prisoners in Damascus and other cities, including Aleppo, Homs and Hama.

But for the coordinator of the team of unidentified bodies of the “white helmets”, the mass graves “they are a secret and a mystery that the regime left”, despite numerous calls received about suspicious places, where “only traces were found”.

Abdul Rahman al-Mawas emphasizes that it is still too early to draw conclusions, as “there are no numbers, no location, no documents or records” about the complaints received and, even in the Sednaya prison, “nothing related to buried bodies was found” in its underground and adjacent areas.

Since November 28, already in the midst of a lightning operation by the rebel forces that overthrew the regime in 13 days, the “white helmets” collected 528 unidentified bodies in Aleppo, Homs and Damascus, but “they were all on the ground in an open field” and had to be quickly collected.

As suspicions leak, leading to a rush of family members, journalists and people linked to social media, the “white helmets” coordinator warns that “no one has the right to open a mass grave”not even his team, as it is “a great responsibility”, which requires the right steps, without mistakes: “I am aware that it will be difficult for a mother, a son or a brother, but stay away from them”.