DAMASCUS, Syria - Beneath some unfinished construction just outside Damascus, skulls and bones lie mixed with gravel dust — remnants of the Tadamon massacre, carried out more than a decade ago by intelligence officers of the former Syrian regime.
The Tadamon massacre is one of the most shocking acts of the Syrian civil war in which the former regime’s intelligence executed around 41 people in cold blood in 2013.
Footage of the massacre, first obtained by the Guardian in April 2022, shows groups of civilians being rounded up, blindfolded and executed by gunfire at a pit.
"They dug a pit below the construction and would climb people up to the building only to throw them down. They would not stop until their bones were crushed. They would torture them to death," said Anas Swedani, from Tadamon neighborhood.
Rudaw filmed multiple mass graves in and around Tadamon that were off-limits to residents. Final investigations concluded that an estimated 350 people had been buried there.
"If you look around and unearth the pits, a big number of massacres will be found." Swedani added.
The Syrian intelligence officer Amjad Yousef, a major in one of Syria's most feared intelligence units, along with Najib al-Halabi appear in a video leaked in April 2022, to be pushing blind-folded people into death pits shortly before shooting them one at a time.
Yousef is still wanted globally while Halabi was reportedly killed in the conflict.
The massacre took place as the rebel forces approached Damascus to overthrow Bashar al-Assad.
At the time of the massacre, one-third of the capital's southern neighborhood was controlled by the Syrian opposition groups.
"They would look at your identity if your brother was affiliated to the Free Syrian Army, they would say, 'very good, bring him. Your cousin? Free Syrian Army? Fine, bring him'," said Mohammed Ahmed, whose two cousins were among the executed in the Tadamon massacre.
According to the residents of the Tadamon neighborhood, perpetrators shot victims one by one and the regime soldiers set the bodies of the victims on fire by burning tires that had been previously placed at the bottom of the pit.
"What's my fault if my cousin is a rebel? They would take you away and accuse you of having links to them. They would execute in groups and throw them into the trench. They would also put tyres in the trench only to burn people alive." Ahmed added.
More than 50 years of the Assad dynasty ended on December 8 after rebel forces engaged in a lightning-quick offensive.
Thousands of the former regime’s dissidents were freed from at least 23 prisons across the country, following the downfall of Assad.
Inmates released from decades of detention and torture told stories that provided a horrific look into how the Assad family brutally treated dissidents during their reign.
Rekar Aziz contributed to this article.