As the Assad’s dictatorship has finally fallen, grim sites of his crimes against humanity are being exposed to the world. On the outskirts of Syria, increasing numbers of mass graves are being found. Forensic teams are now exhuming bodies and going about the grim process of identifying the victims. Since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011 over 100,000 people have disappeared. Human Rights groups believe that over 80,000 of these “disappeared” people have been murdered & their remains in mass graves surrounding Damascus. The UK based “Syrian Observatory of Human Rights” attest that an additional 60,000 Syrians were tortured to death by Assad’s forces throughout the war.
Abdul Kader al-Sheikha says Syria’s secret police “didn’t want anyone to witness what they were doing”
Abdul, Kader al-Sheikha, a local resident who witnessed mass burials of Assad’s victims, stated to the press that Syria’s secret police would fill the graves with bodies while bulldozers buried them and flattened the earth in order to hid their crimes. He revealed that the average grave was 30 square meters with each grave containing approximately 100 bodies. Within some of Assad’s detention centers, rebel forces found the ID’s of hundreds of Syrians detained by Assad’s forces scattered throughout the centers. Former War Crimes Ambassador Stephen Rapp who personally visited two mass grave sites near the towns of Qutafah & Najha testified that what’s being uncovered in Syria “Show the Worse Abuses Since the Nazis.” “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.”
Syrian Civil Defense workers at the site of a mass grave outside Damascus
Other witnesses testified that in the sites of many of these mass graves they continually observed four tractor trailers arriving twice a week from 2012-2018, with each trailer carrying approximately 150 bodies. The trucks contained the bodies of men, women, & children, many of whom had been tortured to death by soldiers of the Assad regime. The Hague currently estimates that there are at lease 66 mass graves throughout Syria containing the bodies of Assad’s victims, with a death count numbering between 100,000-150,000. Assad’s regime committed numerous war crimes that not only include mass murder, but widespread torture, brutal incarceration that led to mass death from disease & starvation, & widespread attacks on civilians using both conventional & chemical weapons. Many are now demanding that Assad and his underlings be brought to justice for their crimes, but many others such as the Foundation of Defense of Democracies (FDD) have voiced outrage of the world’s long-standing indifference to these atrocities.
The uncovering of these mass graves serves as no surprise. The entire world knew that atrocities like this were ongoing in this Civil War that claimed the lives of over 620,000 people, and yet so little was done to condemn the atrocities, let alone stop them. Clifford May, the President of FDD stated “More than 100,000 people were tortured, murdered, and buried in mass graves by Bashar al-Assad and his thugs, who were supported by Tehran and Moscow. Why aren’t the ‘social justice warriors’ at American and European universities protesting? Do they not know about the graves because nothing has popped up about them on these scholars’ iPhones? Or do they know quite well and just don’t give a damn because they can’t blame Israelis, Zionists, or Jews?”
Sources:
Brennan, David, Guy Davies, and James Longman. “Syrian Uncovering ‘Massive’ Graves Could Find 100,000 Bodies, NGO Says.” ABC News. Dec. 17, 2024. Accessed from https://abcnews.go.com/International/syrians-uncovering-massive-graves-find-100000-bodies-ngo/story?id=116860544.
Da Silva, Chantal. “Syrian Mass Graves Show the Worst Human Rights Abuses ‘Since the Nazis,’ Top Prosecutor Says.” NBC. Dec. 18, 2024. Accessed from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/syria-mass-graves-assad-show-worst-abuses-nazis-rcna184644.
Sinjab, Lina. “Syrian Mass Graves: Daunting Task of Searching for and Naming the Dead.” BBC. Dec. 17, 2024. Accessed from https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj90wz8weymo.
“Unseen ‘Since the Nazis’: Syrians Uncover Mass Graves & Evidence of Assad’s Regime’s Atrocities.” Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Dec. 19, 2024. Accessed from https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/12/19/unseen-since-the-nazis-syrians-uncover-mass-graves-and-evidence-of-assad-regimes-atrocities/.