QUTAYFAH, Syria: An international war crimes prosecutor said on Tuesday that evidence emerging from mass grave sites in Syria has exposed a state-run “machinery of death” under toppled leader Bashar Assad in which he estimated more than 100,000 people were tortured and murdered since 2013.
Speaking after visiting two mass grave sites in the towns of Qutayfah and Najha near Damascus, former US war crimes ambassador at large Stephen Rapp told Reuters: “We certainly have more than 100,000 people that were disappeared into and tortured to death in this machine.
“I don’t have much doubt about those kinds of numbers given what we’ve seen in these mass graves.”
“We really haven’t seen anything quite like this since the Nazis,” said Rapp, who led prosecutions at the Rwanda and Sierra Leone war crimes tribunals and is working with Syrian civil society to document war crimes evidence and is helping to prepare for any eventual trials.
“From the secret police who disappeared people from their streets and homes, to the jailers and interrogators who starved and tortured them to death, to the truck drivers and bulldozer drivers who hid their bodies, thousands of people were working in this system of killing,” Rapp said.
“We are talking about a system of state terror, which became a machinery of death.”
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are estimated to have been killed since 2011, when Assad’s crackdown on protests against him spiralled into a full-scale war.
Both Assad and his father Hafez, who preceded him as president and died in 2000, have long been accused by rights groups and governments of widespread extrajudicial killings, including mass executions within the country’s prison system and using chemical weapons against the Syrian people.
Assad, who fled to Moscow, had repeatedly denied that his government committed human rights violations and painted his detractors as extremists.
The head of US-based Syrian advocacy organization the Syrian Emergency Task Force, Mouaz Moustafa, who also visited Qutayfah, 25 miles (40 km) north of Damascus, has estimated at least 100,000 bodies were buried there alone.
The International Commission on Missing Persons in The Hague separately said it had received data indicating there may be as many as 66, as yet unverified, mass grave sites in Syria. More than 157,000 people have been reported missing to the commission.
Commission head Kathryne Bomberger told Reuters its portal for reporting the missing was now “exploding” with new contacts from families.
By comparison, roughly 40,000 people went missing during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
For the families, the search for the truth in Syria could be long and difficult. A DNA match will require at least three relatives providing DNA reference samples and taking a DNA sample from each one of these skeletal remains found in the graves, Bomberger said.
The commission called for sites to be protected so that evidence was preserved for potential trials, but the mass grave sites were easily accessible on Tuesday.
The United States is engaged with a number of UN bodies to ensure the Syrian people get answers and accountability, the State Department said on Tuesday.
Syrian residents living near Qutayfah, a former military base where one of the sites was located, and a cemetery in Najha used to hide bodies from detention sites described seeing a steady stream of refrigeration trucks delivering bodies which were dumped into long trenches dug with bulldozers.
“The graves were prepared in an organized manner — the truck would come, unload the cargo it had, and leave. There were security vehicles with them, and no one was allowed to approach, anyone who got close used to go down with them,” Abb Khalid, who works as a farmer next to Najha cemetery, said.
In Qutayfah, residents declined to speak on camera or use their names for fear of the retribution, saying they were not yet sure the area was safe after Assad’s fall.
“This is the place of horrors,” one said on Tuesday.
Inside a site enclosed with cement walls, three children played near a Russian-made military satellite vehicle. The soil was flat and levelled, with straight long marks where the bodies were believed buried.
Satellite imagery analyzed by Reuters showed large-scale digging began at the location between 2012 and 2014 and continued up until 2022. Multiple satellite images taken by Maxar during that time showed a digger and large trenches visible at the site, along with three or four large trucks.
Omar Hujeirati, a former anti-Assad protest leader who lives near the Najha cemetery, which was used until the larger Qutayfah site was created because it was full, said he suspected several of his missing family members may be in the grave.
He believes at least some of those taken, including two sons and four brothers, were detained for protesting against Assad’s government.
“That was my sin, what made them take my family,” he said, a long, exposed trench behind him where the bodies were apparently buried.
Details of Syria’s mass graves first emerged during German court hearings and US congressional testimony in 2021 and 2023. A man identified only as “the grave digger” testified repeatedly as a witness about his work at the Najha and Qutayfah sites during the German trial of Syrian government officials.
While working in cemeteries around Damascus at the end of 2011, two intelligence officers showed up at his office and ordered him and his colleagues to transport and bury corpses. He testified that he rode in a van adorned with pictures of Assad and drove to the sites several times a week between 2011 and 2018, followed by large refrigeration trucks filled with bodies.
The trucks carried several hundred corpses from Tishreen, Mezzeh and Harasta military hospitals to Najha and Qutayfah, he said in the trial. At the sites deep trenches were already dug and the grave digger and his colleagues would unload the corpses into the trenches, which would be covered with dirt by excavators as soon as a section of the trench was full, he said.
“Every week, twice a week, three trailer trucks arrived, packed with 300 to 600 bodies of victims of torture, starvation, and execution from military hospitals and intelligence branches around Damascus,” he told Congress in a written statement.
The grave digger escaped from Syria to Europe in 2018 and has repeatedly testified about the mass graves, but always with his identity shielded from the public and the media. (Reporting by Timour Azhari in Qutayfah and Anthony Deutsch in Amsterdam; Additional reporting by Reade Levinson and Stephanie van den Berg; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Alison Williams)
Syrian mass graves expose Assad’s ‘machinery of death’
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Syrian mass graves expose Assad’s ‘machinery of death’
- Former US war crimes ambassador Stephen Rapp: "We haven't seen anything like this since the Nazis"
- More than 157,000 people have been reported missing to Hague commission
At first Security Council meeting since Assad’s fall, UN envoy calls for end to Syria sanctions
- Geir Pedersen warns that though the regime of former president Bashar Assad has been toppled, the ‘conflict has not ended yet’
- Council members denounce Israeli authorities for illegal seizure of parts of Syria, call on them to withdraw forces and respect nation’s sovereignty
NEW YORK CITY: The UN’s special envoy for Syria has called for “broad support” from the international community for Syria and an end to crippling economic sanctions, to aid the reconstruction of the country after almost 14 years of civil war.
Speaking from Damascus on Tuesday, Geir Pedersen briefed members of the UN Security Council on the current situation in Syria. It was the council’s first open meeting about the country since the fall of dictator Bashar Assad’s regime on Dec. 8.
The UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, also appealed to all states to ensure “sanctions and counterterrorism measures do not impede” aid operations in Syria, which continues to suffer the effects of a humanitarian crisis that is one of the most dire in the world.
US, UK, EU and other international authorities imposed severe sanctions on Syria after President Assad’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 2011 spiraled into civil war.
They also slapped sanctions on Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham — the militant group that spearheaded the takeover of Damascus this month that ousted Assad — more than a decade ago. At the time, HTS was Al-Qaeda’s official affiliate in Syria but it broke ties with the terrorist group in 2016. However, it remains on the UN Security Council’s sanctions list, subject to a global assets freeze and arms embargo.
Western countries are now grappling with the question of how best to respond to the evolving situation in Syria now that HTS is in power. Though the group has softened its rhetoric, it is still widely labeled a “terrorist” organization by authorities in the West.
Pedersen said: “Concrete movement on an inclusive political transition will be key in ensuring Syria receives the economic support it needs.”
He noted the steps that are being made to achieve a peaceful and orderly transition of power in the country, including efforts to ensure the former government’s ministers remain safe, and calls for state employees to continue their work.
“This provides a strong first basis but it is not, in itself, enough,” Pedersen told council members. The transition must also be “credible and inclusive, including the broadest spectrum of Syrian society and Syrian parties, so that it inspires public confidence,” he added. He also stressed the need to draft a new constitution, and for free and fair elections.
Although events this month have sparked hopes of a real opportunity for peace, economic stability, accountability and justice in Syria, Pedersen warned that many people remain apprehensive about the “enormous” challenges that lie ahead.
“I worry that if this is not handled right, by both the Syrians and the international community, a turn for the worse again is possible,” he said.
Even though Assad is no longer in power, the “conflict has not ended yet,” Pedersen continued, highlighting as a particular concern the clashes between Turkish-backed and Kurdish groups in the north of the country.
“Although there is stability in many parts, and law and order improved, such stability can be fragile, with many front lines and open hostilities still ongoing in northeast, where civilians are being killed, injured and displaced. Such an escalation could be catastrophic,” he said.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces have carried out more than 350 strikes against military facilities, equipment and supplies across Syria since the fall of the Assad regime and the attacks continue, including a major assault on Tartus.
“Such attacks place a battered civilian population at further risk and undermine the prospects of an orderly political transition,” Pedersen said as he called on Israeli authorities to halt all “illegal” settlement activity in the occupied Syrian Golan.
“Attacks on Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must stop,” he added.
Pedersen said he has held talks with Syria’s new de facto leadership. He also visited the “dungeons” and “torture and execution chambers” of Sednaya prison, which he described as “a testament to the barbarity of the fallen regime towards its own people.”
He said that seeing this firsthand served as a stark reminder of the importance of transitional justice, of clarification of the fates and whereabouts of all those still missing or who were disappeared, and of ensuring due process is followed in criminal prosecutions as a necessary safeguard against acts of revenge.
“Without this, Syria and Syrians will not be able to heal,” Pedersen added.
As an urgent first step, he called for the preservation and protection of all evidence and materials related to alleged crimes, and of the sites of mass graves.
Fletcher, the UN humanitarian chief, told the Security Council that the humanitarian crisis in Syria remains one of the worst in the world, with 17 million people in need of support, more than 7 million displaced across the country, and millions more living as refugees.
Nearly 13 million people already face acute food insecurity, he added, and recent events have “only added to these needs.” More than a million people were displaced in less than two weeks during the events that culminated in the fall of the Assad regime, he said, and hundreds of civilians were killed or injured, at least 80 of them children.
Health services and water supplies have been interrupted and more than 12,000 schools temporarily closed, affecting millions of students. As borders and commercial routes remain closed, there are shortages of bread and fuel, Fletcher added.
“The flow of humanitarian support was severely disrupted, with most organizations temporarily suspending operations. Several warehouses have been looted. Multiple aid workers lost their lives,” he said.
He lamented the fact that the effort to fund aid for Syria, “the largest country appeal in the world,” is one of the most poorly supported.
“With just two weeks left in 2024, it is less than a third funded, the largest-ever funding gap for the Syria response,” Fletcher said. “Now is the time to invest in the Syrian people.”
Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, said Syria’s future is “currently quite uncertain given the internal lack of stability and the palpable threats to Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
He warned that there is “a real risk of Syria becoming a number of cantons, broken down by ethnic and religious characteristics,” and called on the Syrian people to make every effort to ensure that an inclusive national dialogue takes place, without separating people into “losers and winners.”
Slovenia’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, Ondina Blokar Drobic, told the council that a prosperous future for Syria will depend on a credible and inclusive political transition, and an inclusive Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political process. She emphasized the necessity of participation by women in this process.
Drobic also underscored the obligation on all parties to take a stand against terrorism, as she stressed the importance of preventing Daesh and other terrorist groups from reestablishing their capabilities, and of denying them safe haven.
Syria’s caretaker authorities “must also respect Syria’s other international obligations, including the Chemical Weapons Convention,” she added.
Turkish rescuers end search of Syria’s Saydnaya prison
- The prison complex was thoroughly searched by Syria’s White Helmets emergency workers but they wrapped up their operations on Tuesday, saying they were unable to find any more prisoners
ISTANBUL: Turkish rescue workers have ended their search for survivors in Syria’s notorious Saydnaya prison, their leader said Tuesday, after finding no detainees languishing in any hidden cells.
Located just north of Damascus, the prison became a symbol of rights abuses under president Bashar Assad, who was ousted by Islamist-led rebels on December 8.
The search by a 120-member team was conducted at the request of Syria’s new authorities, according to Okay Memis, director of Turkiye’s AFAD disaster relief agency.
“The entire building was searched and analyzed with a scanner, and no living person was found,” Memis told journalists at the site.
Prisoners held inside the complex, which was the site of extrajudicial executions, torture and forced disappearances, were freed early last week by the Islamist-led rebels.
But the complex is thought to descend several levels underground, fueling suspicions that more prisoners could be held in undiscovered hidden cells.
The Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison (ADMSP), however, believes the rumors about hidden cells are unfounded.
The prison complex was thoroughly searched by Syria’s White Helmets emergency workers but they wrapped up their operations on Tuesday, saying they were unable to find any more prisoners.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 100,000 people have died in Syria’s jails and detention centers since 2011, when Syria’s civil war erupted.
Palestinian families sue US government over military aid to Israel
- Complaint calls for the implementation of the so-called Leahy Law, which the plaintiffs and rights group say Israel has been illegally exempted from
- Since the start of Israel’s war against Hamas, the United States has enacted legislation to provide more than $12.5 billion in direct military aid to its strategic ally
WASHINGTON: Five Palestinian families on Tuesday sued the State Department over Washington’s billions in military aid to Israel, demanding the enforcement of US rules to curb arms flows due to allegations of human rights abuses.
The complaint, filed on Tuesday and to which the State Department has 60 days to respond, calls for the implementation of the so-called Leahy Law, which the plaintiffs and rights group say Israel has been illegally exempted from.
The law prohibits the provision of security assistance to units facing credible allegations of human rights abuses.
Since the start of Israel’s war against Hamas in October 2023, the United States has enacted legislation to provide more than $12.5 billion in direct military aid to its strategic ally.
The war was sparked by an attack by Hamas on Israel that resulted in the deaths of at least 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures that includes hostages killed in captivity.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 45,059 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.
Much of the Palestinian enclave has been reduced to rubble in the process.
At a press conference in Washington on Tuesday, Palestinian-American plaintiff Said Assali said his aunt and her six children were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City, alleging US weapons were used to carry out the attack.
“Our families paid an unbearable price for the State Department’s refusal to enforce its own laws,” said Assali.
Two former State Department staffers told journalists US authorities apply an informal “Israel exception” when assessing the country’s military actions.
“The reality is that Israel operates under a different set of rules. The State Department has created this unique, burdensome, high-level process for determining (that) applies only to Israel,” said Charles Blaha, a former State Department official who worked on such determinations.
Josh Paul, who resigned from the State Department last year in protest of US policy on Gaza, offered a similar assessment.
The State Department declined to comment on the filing of the complaint.
Earlier this month, rights group Amnesty International accused Israel of “committing genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza since the start of the war.
In November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant on suspicion of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Israel’s government vehemently denies the allegations, and has appealed the warrants.
Ahmed Moor, a plaintiff in Tuesday’s lawsuit, said seven of his family members in Gaza were living “under a constant fear of bombardment,” and that one had been killed.
“My family members are people just like you and me, and their lives have been destroyed by American weapons in direct violation of American law,” he said.
“My family’s living a nightmare.”
Assad’s fall clears way for expanded US strikes on Daesh militants
- “Terrorist groups like Daesh love a power vacuum, and so there is a risk that Daesh can exploit the chaos of a post-Assad Syria to resurface to an even greater extent,” said Raphael Cohen, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation
WASHINGTON: Bashar Assad’s overthrow has cleared the way for US strikes against the Daesh group in areas previously shielded by Syrian and Russian air defenses — but the terrorists may also try to exploit the vacuum left by his fall.
The militant group, often referred to as Daesh, rose out of the chaos of the Syrian civil war to seize swathes of territory there and in neighboring Iraq, prompting a US-led air campaign starting in 2014 in support of local ground forces who ultimately defeated the insurgents.
Washington — which has troops in both Iraq and Syria — has for years carried out periodic strikes and raids to help prevent a resurgence of the brutal militant group, but stepped up its military action since Assad’s fall earlier this month, hitting dozens of targets.
“Previously, you had Syrian regime and Russian air defenses which would preclude, in many cases, our ability to — or desirability to go into those areas,” Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder told journalists this week.
Now, “it’s a much more permissible environment in that regard,” Ryder said.
On December 8 — the day Syrian rebels took the capital Damascus — Washington announced strikes on more than 75 Daesh targets that the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said were aimed at ensuring the group “does not seek to take advantage of the current situation to reconstitute in central Syria.”
And on Monday, CENTCOM said US forces killed 12 Daesh militants with strikes it said were carried out “in former regime and Russian-controlled areas.”
While Assad’s overthrow has eased access for US strikes, the Syrian leader’s departure could also provide an opening for Daesh militants.
“Terrorist groups like Daesh love a power vacuum, and so there is a risk that Daesh can exploit the chaos of a post-Assad Syria to resurface to an even greater extent,” said Raphael Cohen, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation.
There is also a danger that Washington’s Kurdish allies — who have previously been targeted by Turkiye — may have to shift their focus to countering their neighbor to the north.
“That’s a particularly acute risk since they are functionally guarding Daesh detainees, so if they are released, that would obviously have negative effects on the counter-Daesh fight,” Cohen said.
The United States currently has some 900 troops in eastern Syria as part of its efforts to counter Daesh, but that could potentially change after President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month.
“Trump — during his first administration — signaled that he wanted to withdraw American forces from Syria. I can easily imagine a second Trump administration making a renewed push to do so, especially now that Assad is gone,” Cohen said.
Trump could also reduce US military commitments in the Middle East to let regional allies deal with challenges there, Cohen said, noting that “if that would happen, US counterterrorism strategy would look very different as a result.”
Syria Kurdish leader proposes ‘demilitarised zone’ in northern town
- Mazloum Abdi: ‘Reaffirming our firm commitment to achieving a ceasefire across all of Syria, we announce our readiness to propose the establishment of a demilitarised zone in Kobani’
- Announcement comes amid fears of an assault by Turkiye on the Kurdish-held border town of Kobani, also known as Ain Al-Arab
BEIRUT, Lebanon: The leader of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces on Tuesday proposed a “demilitarised zone” in the northern town of Kobani as fighting with Turkish-backed groups grips northern Syria.
“Reaffirming our firm commitment to achieving a comprehensive ceasefire across all of Syria, we announce our readiness to propose the establishment of a demilitarised zone in the city of Kobani, with the redeployment of security forces under American supervision and presence,” Mazloum Abdi wrote on X.
The announcement comes amid fears of an assault by Turkiye on the Kurdish-held border town of Kobani, also known as Ain Al-Arab, a week after Turkish-supported Islamist rebels toppled Syrian strongman Bashar Assad.
Earlier Tuesday, the United States said it had brokered an extension of a ceasefire between pro-Turkish fighters and Syrian Kurds at the flashpoint town of Manbij, and was seeking a broader understanding with Ankara.
The Manbij truce, which had recently expired, “is extended through the end of the week, and we will, obviously, look to see that ceasefire extended as far as possible into the future,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.
In a statement earlier on Tuesday, the SDF had accused Ankara of plotting an attack on Kobani.
“Turkiye has mobilized large numbers of its forces and militias with heavy weaponry around Kobani,” the statement said, adding that Ankara was “ready for an attack.”
Turkiye accuses the main component of the SDF, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), of being affiliated with Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants at home, whom both Washington and Ankara consider a “terrorist” group.
