ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Syrian interior ministry on Sunday released a video confession of Amjad Youseef, key suspect in the April 2013 massacre of at least 41 people in the Tadamoun neighborhood south of Damascus, two days after his arrest.
“We placed tires under them, then more tires on top, and set them on fire so that no smell would spread in the area,” said Youssef in the video, describing how they dug a pit by a bulldozer and shot the victims individually before placing them in the mass grave.
The ministry posted the confession footage on X under the title “The Tadamoun Butcher”.
Youssef was arrested on Friday in the west-central city of Hama in a “tightly executed security operation,” said Mulham al-Shantout, commander of Hama’s security forces, in the video.
He served as a warrant officer in the military intelligence directorate under the ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad. He was responsible for security operations in southern Damascus during the Syrian civil war from 2011 to 2024.
The key suspect became visible in April 2022 when a leaked video footage showed him and other military men forcing blindfolded and bound individuals to run before opening fire and disposing of their bodies in a mass grave.
“We brought about 40 individuals assuming they were, back then, terrorists or funding terrorism,” Youssef said in the video, adding that he was not ordered by his superiors to commit the slaughter, but the victims were selected based on intelligence reports.