Unique: Assad authorities secretly moved mass grave to cowl up killings, Reuters investigation finds

Reuters knowledgeable the federal government of President Ahmed al-Sharaa of the findings of this investigation on Tuesday. The federal government didn’t instantly reply to questions for this report.

The information company is not revealing the positioning’s exact location right here, to scale back the probability that intruders could tamper with the grave. A forthcoming Reuters particular report will element the story of how the Assad authorities executed the clandestine operation and the way reporters uncovered the scheme.

With not less than 34 trenches measuring 2 kilometers lengthy, the grave within the Dhumair desert is among the many most intensive created through the Syrian civil battle, Reuters has discovered. Witness accounts and the size of the brand new website counsel that tens of 1000’s of individuals might be buried there.

Assad’s authorities started burying the lifeless at Qutayfah round 2012, early within the civil battle. The mass grave contained the our bodies of troopers and prisoners who died within the dictator’s prisons and navy hospitals, the witnesses mentioned.

A Syrian human rights activist uncovered Qutayfah by releasing images to native media in 2014, revealing the grave’s existence and its normal location on the outskirts of Damascus. Its exact location got here to gentle a number of years later, in courtroom testimony and different media stories.

A element of what one witness informed Reuters was an incomplete trench dug to take our bodies on this mass grave website within the desert close to the jap Syrian city of Dhumair, February 27, 2025. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

A drone view of imprints, made by bulldozer tracks, on the soil protecting a burial trench a mass grave within the jap Syrian desert close to the city of Dhumair, February 27, 2025. A Reuters investigation discovered that the Assad authorities secretly trucked 1000’s of our bodies there from an uncovered mass grave within the Damascus suburb of Qutayfah from 2019-2021. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

For 4 nights practically each week from February 2019 to April 2021, six to eight vans crammed with grime and human stays traveled from Qutayfah to the Dhumair desert website, in keeping with the witnesses concerned within the operation. Reuters couldn’t affirm if our bodies from elsewhere additionally arrived on the secret website and located no documentation mentioning Operation Transfer Earth or mass graves extra usually.

Everybody immediately concerned vividly recalled the stench, together with two truckers, three mechanics, a bulldozer operator and a former officer from Assad’s elite Republican Guard who was concerned from the earliest days of the switch.

Former President Assad, who’s in Russia, and a number of other navy officers recognized by witnesses as taking part in key roles within the operation couldn’t be reached for remark. After the dictatorship’s fall late final 12 months, Assad and plenty of of his aides fled the nation.

The thought to maneuver 1000’s of our bodies got here into being in late 2018, when Assad was verging on victory in Syria’s civil battle, mentioned the previous Republican Guard officer. The dictator hoped to regain worldwide recognition after being sidelined by years of sanctions and allegations of brutality, the officer mentioned. On the time, Assad had already been accused of detaining Syrians by the 1000’s. However no impartial Syrian teams or worldwide organizations had entry to the prisons or the mass graves.