Mass Graves and Torture: The Dark Legacy of the Assad Regime
The Grim Toll of Detention
More than 1,000 Syrians died in detention at a military airport on the outskirts of Damascus, killed by execution, torture, or maltreatment. This grim toll is revealed in a report to be published on Thursday, tracing the deaths to seven suspected grave sites.
A Report of Horrors
The Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC) identified the grave sites using a combination of witness testimony, satellite imagery, and documents photographed at the military airport in the Damascus suburb of Mezzeh after the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad in December. Some sites were on the airport grounds, while others were across Damascus.
The Survivors’ Stories
Shadi Haroun, one of the report’s authors, was among the captives. He described daily interrogations with physical and psychological torture intended to force him into baseless confessions. "Death came in many forms," he said. "Although detainees saw nothing except their cell walls or the interrogation room, they could hear ‘occasional shootings, shot by shot, every couple of days.’"
The Injuries Inflicted
Haroun described a cellmate’s plight, saying, "A small wound on the foot of one of the detainees, caused by a whipping he received during torture, was left unsterilized or untreated for days, which gradually turned into gangrene and his condition worsened until it reached the point of amputation of the entire foot."
The New Government’s Response
The new government has issued a decree forbidding former regime officials from speaking publicly, and none were available to comment. However, a colonel in the new government’s Interior Ministry, who identified himself as Abu Baker, said, "Although some of the graves mentioned in the report had not been discovered before, the discovery itself does not surprise us, as we know that there are more than 100,000 missing persons in Assad’s prisons who did not come out during the days of liberation in early December."
The Legacy of the Assad Regime
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are estimated to have been killed since 2011, when Assad’s crackdown on protests spiraled 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, foreign governments, and war-crimes prosecutors of widespread extrajudicial killings, including mass executions within the country’s prison system and using chemical weapons against the Syrian people.
The Syria Justice and Accountability Centre’s Report
The SJAC’s report focuses on the first years of the uprising, from 2011 to 2017. The organization interviewed 156 survivors and eight former members of air force intelligence, Syria’s security service tasked with the surveillance, imprisonment, and killing of regime critics. The report also obtained documents and cross-checked them against witness testimony and satellite imagery.
The Mezzeh Military Airport
The Mezzeh military airport was an integral part of the Assad government’s machinery of enforced disappearance and housed at least 29,000 detainees between 2011 and 2017. By 2020, air force intelligence had converted more than a dozen hangars, dormitories, and offices at Mezzeh into prisons.
The Estimate of the Dead
SJAC’s estimate of the dead comes from two air force intelligence datasets listing a total of 1,154 detainees who died there between 2011 and 2017. The datasets were leaked in a Facebook group monitored by SJAC as the regime collapsed and cross-checked by the organization against documents and witness testimony. The estimate does not include people who were executed after being sentenced to death by a military field court set up inside a hangar.
Conclusion
The discovery of mass graves and the testimonies of survivors reveal the dark legacy of the Assad regime. The report’s findings are a stark reminder of the atrocities committed during the Syrian conflict and the need for accountability and justice.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How many people are estimated to have died in detention at the Mezzeh military airport?
A: More than 1,000 people are estimated to have died in detention at the Mezzeh military airport.
Q: What was the purpose of the Mezzeh military airport?
A: The Mezzeh military airport was an integral part of the Assad government’s machinery of enforced disappearance and housed at least 29,000 detainees between 2011 and 2017.
Q: Who was responsible for the atrocities committed at the Mezzeh military airport?
A: The Assad government, under the leadership of President Bashar al-Assad, was responsible for the atrocities committed at the Mezzeh military airport.