Reports are emerging of mass grave discoveries in Syria. The Syrian aid organization White Helmets has received notifications of thirteen mass graves across the country.
Reuters has spoken with witnesses who claim to have seen these graves. A mass grave, north of Damascus, allegedly contains at least 100,000 bodies.
Mouaz Moustafa, head of the nonprofit Syrian Emergency Task Force, informed Reuters that he has personally seen five mass graves in recent years. Moustafa states 100,000 is a conservative estimate for the grave in Qutayfah, roughly 40 kilometers north of the capital.
Former U.S. ambassador for war crimes, Stephen Rapp, visited the site and does not doubt the figure, although the basis for this number is unclear. The White Helmets estimate about 150,000 Syrians are still missing, many of whom opposed the regime and disappeared into prisons after the civil war began in 2011.
This prison system, notorious for its brutal conditions and torture practices, was a crucial support for the regime. The end of the Assad era marked the beginning of a search for missing loved ones for many Syrians.
With prisons now empty, the search has shifted to the regime’s burial sites and mortuaries. Stephen Rapp collaborates with the Commission for International Justice and Accountability and the Syrian Emergency Task Force to document mass grave findings.
Rapp compares the scale of killings and burials to the Nazi era. Residents near military detention centers report seeing refrigerated trucks transporting bodies to mass graves during the Assad era.
Deputy head of the White Helmets, Mounir al-Mustafa, states that retrieving all the bodies could take years, as documenting and identifying them is a massive task. The priority is identifying unidentified bodies in mortuaries and hospitals.
Last week, the body of well-known Syrian refugee Mazen Hamada was found in the notorious Sednaya prison. He lived in the Netherlands until 2020.
Source: NOS