Exclusive: Assad government secretly moved mass grave to cover up killings, Reuters investigation finds

For four nights nearly every week from February 2019 to April 2021, six to eight trucks filled with dirt and human remains traveled from Qutayfah to the Dhumair desert site, according to the witnesses involved in the operation. Reuters could not confirm if bodies from elsewhere also arrived at the secret site and found no documentation mentioning Operation Move Earth or mass graves more generally.
Everyone directly involved vividly recalled the stench, including two truckers, three mechanics, a bulldozer operator and a former officer from Assad’s elite Republican Guard who was involved from the earliest days of the transfer.
Former President Assad, who is in Russia, and several military officials identified by witnesses as playing key roles in the operation couldn’t be reached for comment. After the dictatorship’s fall late last year, Assad and many of his aides fled the country.
The idea to move thousands of bodies came into being in late 2018, when Assad was verging on victory in Syria’s civil war, said the former Republican Guard officer. The dictator was hoping to regain international recognition after being sidelined by years of sanctions and allegations of brutality, the officer said. At the time, Assad had already been accused of detaining Syrians by the thousands. But no independent Syrian groups or international organizations had access to the prisons or the mass graves.

Two truckers and the officer told Reuters they were told by military commanders the point of the transfer was to clear out the Qutayfah mass grave and hide evidence of mass killings.
By the time Assad fell, all 16 trenches documented at Qutayfah by Reuters had been emptied.
More than 160,000 people disappeared into the deposed dictator’s vast security apparatus and are believed to be buried in the dozens of mass graves he created, according to Syrian rights groups. Organized excavation and DNA analysis could help trace what happened to them, easing one of Syria’s most painful faultlines.
But with few resources in Syria, even well-known mass graves are largely unprotected and unexcavated. And the country’s new leaders, who overthrew Assad in December, have released no documentation about the individuals buried in them, despite repeated calls from the families of the missing.
Syrian Minister of Emergency and Disaster Management Raed al-Saleh has said the sheer number of victims and the need to rebuild the justice system hinder the work. Syria’s new National Commission for Missing People has announced plans to create a DNA bank and a centralized digital platform for families of the missing, and said there was an urgent need to train specialists in forensic medicine and DNA testing.