A mass grave that could contain the remains of some 100,000 people has been found outside Syria’s capital Damascus, as the new interim government promises to hold accountable those responsible for atrocities under the ousted President Bashar al-Assad.
The site at al-Qutayfah, located 40km (25 miles) north of the capital, was one of several mass graves identified across the country after the collapse of the decades-long rule of the al-Assad family.
Twelve mass graves were also discovered in southern Syria. At one site, 22 bodies, including those of women and children, exhibited signs of execution and torture.
Al-Assad and his father Hafez, who preceded him as president and died in 2000, are accused of killing hundreds of thousands through extrajudicial killings, including in the country’s notorious prison system.
Ugur Umit Ungor, professor of genocide studies at the University of Amsterdam, told Al Jazeera that the discovery of the “centralised mass grave” in al-Qutayfah was “a reflection of the killing machine of the Assad regime”.
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“The true scale of exactly how many mass graves are out there is only to be found in the archives of the Assad regime, that’s why it is absolutely crucial that they are handled in a professional way and that people don’t go pillaging them,” he said.
Ungor said creating a DNA depository of the families whose relatives are missing would help match the remains to a name, giving closure to those still looking for their loved ones.
The professor was among a handful of academics who received videos and other evidence from anonymous sources as part of a yearlong investigation into the burial sites.
Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Vall, reporting from Qatana, said Mouaz Moustafa, the head of the United States-based Syrian advocacy organisation Syrian Emergency Task Force, estimated the number of bodies at the site could surpass 100,000.
Vall said the Syrian air force intelligence was believed to have been in charge of transferring the bodies from the hospitals – where they were collected from after having been killed in prison – and taking them to the mass graves.
“These mass graves hold the secrets of 54 years of despotism, torture and dictatorship,” Vall said. “This is only the beginning.”
Last week, Human Rights Watch visited the southern Damascus neighbourhood of Tadamon, where it found human remains that showed signs consistent with executions. The New York-based organisation called on the transitional Syrian authorities to preserve physical evidence across the country.
The commander-in-chief of the new administration, Ahmed al-Sharaa, told Al Jazeera that those who committed crimes against the Syrian people or who actively helped al-Assad commit those crimes would be brought to justice.
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“We won’t give up on delivering the justice our people expect and we will not let the atrocities committed against our people be forgotten,” al-Sharaa, also known as Abu Mohammed al-Julani, said.
He added that “we’re gathering and collecting evidence” and called on the United Nations and other international institutions to help document the crimes committed by the regime.
On Monday, al-Assad put out his first statement since he was ousted, saying he fled Syria for Russia only after Damascus had fallen, and he denounced the country’s new leaders as “terrorists”.
Al-Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is listed as a “terrorist” group by many governments. It has sought to assuage fears, assuring protection for minorities, security and a peaceful political transition.
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