Times: Mass graves suggest 105,000 missing Syrians killed by Assad regime

Thousands of people were secretly buried during the rule of Bashar al-Assad's regime at a site about 50 kilometers northeast of the capital, Damascus, Syrian officials said, as the families of 100,000 Syrians search for their missing relatives.

Residents of cities and suburbs across the country believe they know where these people are, according to the Times, in fields where soldiers have been seen digging, or vegetable trucks have stopped for no apparent reason.

"The trucks came at night," said Abdul Bu Jihad, 42, a gravedigger near the town of Aqraba, southeast of Damascus. "Blood was running from the bottom of the trucks, and we could still see the blood on the road the next day."

Worst smell

Satellite images analyzed by the newspaper show a large wall surrounding watchtowers at a site that includes, in addition to rows of distinctive graves, a series of trenches. Before 2011, it was just a regular cemetery, and it appears to have been transformed into a mass grave since 2012 after the outbreak of the war.

The newspaper noted that huge numbers of people arrested and killed by the regime have been circulating since the start of the revolution in 2011, including a list held by observers of 136,000 missing persons, of whom about 31,000 have been released, meaning that at least 105,000 people are presumed dead.

There is growing evidence, according to the newspaper, that many former detainees were buried in mass graves in sites near Al-Qutayfah, about 50 kilometers northeast of Damascus.

Local officials there say thousands were buried secretly between 2013 and 2015, but the plot of land was bulldozed two years ago and became the site of a base for the Lebanese Hezbollah group, where abandoned military vehicles and communications equipment now lie.

Mohammed Abu al-Baha, 40, a teacher from al-Qutayfah who was doing his military service in the town, recalls seeing soldiers digging 50-metre-long trenches. A few weeks later, he encountered “the worst smell you could ever smell” and when he asked the soldiers, he was told it was “from the corpses.”

Over the following months, Mohammed Abu al-Baha watched soldiers place bodies in trenches. “I would pass by this cemetery and see refrigerated trucks full of bodies,” he said. Most of the bodies were in large plastic bags, some uncovered, unloaded from fruit and vegetable trucks and piled into the trenches “one on top of the other.” He estimated that “at least 2,000 bodies” were buried there.

Saidnaya

The newspaper pointed out that satellite images of Qatif are consistent with Baha's testimony, and that Muhammad Abu Abdullah, the town's mayor, said that the grave was created after local opposition to placing the bodies of prisoners in unmarked pits in the civilian cemetery in the center of the town.

"Back then, blood was very cheap, anyone could be killed for the slightest reason or any accusation. Many young men disappeared with or without charges. Once they were taken to the regional security branch, they were either executed or died from hunger, disease, filth and torture," he added.

“This is where they used to send people who were killed in detention centers and at checkpoints,” said Diab Seria, who works for the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons in Sednaya Prison, the group that previously identified the site.

Imad al-Jam, 40, said that during his sentence in Sednaya, he witnessed groups of 50 to 400 prisoners being taken to the basement and executed. He added that before 2022, these executions used to happen every month or two, but they have become rare, stressing that “no one remains in the prison who was arrested before 2017.”

Source: Times