The NGO Human Rights Watch confirms the existence of a mass grave in Damascus, after possible “mass crimes” by the Assad regime

The NGO has been investigating the abuses committed in the Tadamon district since 2021, where dozens of civilians were summarily executed.

Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, revelations about the crimes committed by his regime have followed one another. The NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) claims, in an investigation published Tuesday, December 17, to have discovered a mass grave in Tadamon, a district of Damascus. “Statements from residents of this neighborhood suggest that this area is a scene of mass crimes and may have been the scene of other summary executions”reports the organization, which attributes these abuses to “Syrian government forces and affiliated militias”.

HRW researchers visited the site on December 11 and 12, after a coalition of Syrian rebels took power. They have “discovered dozens of human remains”notably “teeth and a skull, a jaw, a hand and pelvic bones, in the earth and in a bag recovered by the inhabitants”at the place of a “massacre perpetrated in April 2013”. “Human remains were also scattered on the floors of buildings next to the mass grave, leading researchers to conclude that other people were most likely killed or buried in the same location.”continues the NGO.

HRW identified the location of this mass grave after geolocating a video showing 11 people “shot at close range and pushed into the machine-dug pit, alongside the bodies of 13 other people”. The abuses committed in Tadamon were revealed in 2022 by two researchers, who had received a video discovered by a member of a Syrian militia, relayed in particular by The Guardian. “This video, filmed by the killers themselves, who laughed as they shot their victims, shows the deep contempt that the Syrian government displayed for people’s lives,” denounces Hiba Zayadin, researcher for HRW.

“Residents of Tadamon said executions in this neighborhood were common, ajoute Human Rights Watch. In interviews in 2022, they described at least ten other cases of summary executions between August 2012 and January 2014, in Tadamon, Daraya, Moadamiya and surrounding areas.

The NGO calls on the international community and the Syrian transitional government to “secure and preserve probable sites of mass crimes for coordinated exhumations and forensic investigations.” Without this, “there is a serious risk that evidence required for accountability will be lostmet en garde Hiba Zayadin. The loved ones of those so brutally killed here deserve to know what happened to them.”