At least 100,000 bodies in Syrian mass grave, says head of US-based advocacy group
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WASHINGTON - The head of a US-based Syrian advocacy organisation on Dec 16 said that a mass grave outside Damascus contained the bodies of at least 100,000 people killed by the government of ousted president Bashar al-Assad
The site at al Qutayfah, 40km north of the Syrian capital, was one of five mass graves he had identified over the years, said Mr Mouaz Moustafa, head of the Syrian Emergency Task Force.
“One hundred thousand is the most conservative estimate” of the number of bodies buried at the site, he told Reuters on the telephone from Damascus.
“It’s a very, very extremely, almost unfairly conservative estimate.”
Mr Moustafa added that he was sure there were more mass graves than the five sites and that along with Syrians, victims included American and British citizens and other foreigners.
Reuters was unable to confirm his allegations.
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are estimated to have been killed since 2011 when Mr Assad’s crackdown on protests against his rule grew into a full-scale civil war.
Mr Assad and his father Hafez, who preceded him as president and died in 2000, are accused by Syrians, rights groups and other governments of widespread extrajudicial killings, including mass executions within the country’s notorious prison system.
Mr Assad had repeatedly denied that his government committed human rights violations and painted his detractors as extremists.
Syria’s UN ambassador Koussay Aldahhak did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He assumed the role in January – while Mr Assad was still in power – but told reporters last week that he was awaiting instructions from the new authorities and would “keep defending and working for the Syrian people”.
Mr Moustafa arrived in Syria after Mr Assad flew to Russia and his government collapsed in the face of a lightning offensive by rebels that ended his family's more than 50 years of iron-fisted rule.
He spoke to Reuters after he was interviewed at the site in al Qutayfah by Britain's Channel 4 News for a report on the alleged mass grave there.
He said the intelligence branch of the Syrian air force was “in charge of bodies going from military hospitals, where bodies were collected after they had been tortured to death, to different intelligence branches, and then they would be sent to a mass grave location”.
Corpses were transported to sites by the Damascus municipal funeral office, whose personnel helped unload them from refrigerated tractor-trailers, he said.
“We were able to talk to the people who worked on these mass graves that had on their own escaped Syria or that we helped to escape,” he added.
His group has spoken to bulldozer drivers compelled to dig graves and “many times, on orders, squished the bodies down to fit them in and then cover them with dirt”, he said.
Mr Moustafa expressed concern that graves sites were unsecured and said they needed to be preserved to safeguard evidence for investigations. REUTERS
