SOHR: “The worst is yet to come.” A Syrian “grave digger” reveals to Congress the atrocities of the Assad regime

A person known as the “grave digger” revealed to US Senators (Congress), during a hearing on the conflict in Syria,Wednesday, that mass graves are still being excavated, and they are full of victims of the ongoing conflict with the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. As reported by CNN Thursday.

According to the network, the “grave digger”, who was dressed in black clothes that covered him from head to toe, spoke about the atrocities he witnessed while working as a civilian laborer at a mass grave in Syria from 2011 to 2018.

He said he left Syria in 2018. Recently, he spoke with others who had fled, who told him that mass graves were still being excavated.

The civil war in Syria began in 2011 as a peaceful uprising against Assad, and an estimated 400,000 Syrians have been killed in the war, which continues now for more than a decade, and millions more have been displaced inside and outside Syria, according to the United Nations.

The network indicated that the “grave digger” was working as an administrative employee in the Damascus municipality before the war, but in 2011 Syrian regime intelligence officials visited his office and ordered him to work for them, and he said: “When the regime asks for something, don’t say no.” He added: “Three trucks loaded with between 300 and 600 bodies of victims of torture, shelling and slaughter were arriving. Twice a week, as well as 3 or 4 pickup trucks carrying 30 to 40 bodies of civilians who were executed in Sednaya prison.”

Sednaya Prison is a military prison near the Syrian capital, Damascus, and was used to detain thousands of prisoners, including civilian detainees, including opponents of the Syrian regime. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates that about 30,000 detainees have died in Sednaya prison under torture, ill-treatment, and mass execution since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war.

According to the network, the “grave digger” managed to escape from Syria in 2018, tracked his family to Europe, and testified before a German court in Koblenz about the atrocities he witnessed, and said that because of the other people he worked with and who recently fled, he knows that there are still mass graves. It is excavated to this day. “My heart is heavy to know that so many at this very moment are being subjected to inhuman torture at the hands of the Assad regime,” he said. “In some cases, I know exactly where they were piled up in mass graves that are still being dug today. I know this because others who They worked with me in mass graves, they recently escaped, and they confirmed what we were hearing.”

The “grave digger” considered that the longer the war continues and Assad remains in power, the more empowering Russian President Vladimir Putin will be. He said, “Empowering Assad empowers Putin, but stopping Assad harms the Russian dictator. We must learn from the past and not let this moment happen again.” He also recounted the atrocities he experienced while working at the mass grave sites. In one case, a man was alive among the bodies thrown from a truck. “One of the civilian workers said in tears that we had to do something, while the intelligence officer who The bulldozer driver supervises us by running him over, and the driver did not hesitate, or else he would have run over and killed the man, as well as the young man in our workshop who dared to shed tears for the victim of the Assad regime, we have not seen him again.”

The “grave digger” called on US senators to “take action,” and said, “Although hundreds of thousands have already been killed and disappeared and millions displaced, the worst is yet to come, it can be prevented, but I ask you not to wait one second, I beg you to take action.” ».