While around 100,000 Syrians are missing, victims of the regime, the first bodies have been spotted. Franceinfo followed the “white helmets” on the ground.
A little more than a week after the fall of Bashar-Al-Assad, the Syrians are seeking to discover the fate of tens of thousands of missing people, estimated at nearly 100,000. The first bodies are beginning to be discovered. On Monday, December 16, more than 25 bodies were found in Izra, 80 kilometers south of Damascus.
According to franceinfo, at least 17 bodies were also discovered next to the highway leading to the airport in the Syrian capital. It is therefore only the beginning of a long process carried out by the Syrian civil defense forces, the “white helmets”, which our special envoys were able to follow.
Men in white overalls, black body bags and dozens of bones on the ground or in bags… They were left there a few days ago without us knowing the precise date. According to Abdulrahman Almawwas, the co-founder of the “White Helmets”, these human remains date from before the revolution. And if they started the research here, it's because “We received a call and that the bodies were on the ground and not underground. We need to remove them so that they are not in plain sight and at the mercy of the animals”he explains.
The task seems immense, especially since numerous testimonies give the location of potential mass graves. One of them is located next to a cemetery, southeast of Damascus. Many witnesses say they have seen refrigerated trucks coming here for more than ten years and dumping bodies there. franceinfo was indeed able to note the presence of deep and long trenches… but no human remains.
Abdelaziz is one of the gravediggers in this cemetery. “Can you see these trenches? There are four or five of them there, filled with corpses. These trenches were closed up. They were digging and putting the bodies in and bulldozers were covering them with earth. They came twice a week. week, there was blood pouring out of the trucks as they drove.”
Other witnesses describe exactly the same process. This is the case of Ayman Mohammad Khalil, also the gravedigger of this cemetery. “Once, when I was here with my friend the truck passed, they said to me: 'come a little, come help us'. We came to help them. My friend went there, they opened the truck and I smelled it, I almost vomited, I got away from them and I ran away… The first truck I saw was in 2012 or 2013. That day. -there it was full when they. came, they pulled the bodies out of the truck and threw them in the hole.”
“The truck was full of bodies, it’s impossible to count the number of bodies, I couldn’t count.”
Ayman Muhammad Khalilat franceinfo
An Amnesty International researcher indicates that guards and inmates at Sadnaya Prison also referred to this location as the “final destination” of some tortured and executed prisoners. These testimonies will now have to be substantiated to determine how many bodies were thrown into mass graves.
“No one can give an estimate or know precisely this figure because the number of missing people is enormous,” reports Ismail al-Abdullah, spokesperson for the “White Helmets”, who specifies that “All were buried underground. Their number is therefore very important, it is not a few bodies or hundreds…“
“We are talking about thousands of people missing for years not just today or last month.”
Ismail al-Abdullah, spokesperson for the “White Helmets”at franceinfo
For the moment, the “white helmets” have not had authorization to dig up corpses. But they already know that they will have to accomplish this considerable task for several years.
