The massacre in the Tadamon neighborhood in Damascus has returned to the forefront again, after the Syrian authorities began excavations and excavations to extract the remains of victims who were executed in the field more than a decade ago, in one of the most heinous crimes associated with the apparatus of the former Syrian regime, following the arrest of Amjad Youssef, known as the “Solidarity Butcher.”
In a scene that has reopened the wounds of Syrians, since yesterday, Friday, the National Authority for Missing Persons has begun search and excavation work inside the Al-Tadamon neighborhood, south of the capital, Damascus, where horrific massacres occurred during the year 2013, amid information about the presence of mass graves and excavations containing dozens of victims who were killed in the field.
The authority explained that search operations will continue for several days with the aim of exhuming the remains of the victims who were executed by Amjad Yousef, while Al-Arabiya and Al-Hadath information reported that the remains of 12 people have been recovered so far, including children.
This comes weeks after the Syrian authorities announced the arrest of Amjad Yousef late last April, in a security operation described as a court that was carried out in the Al-Ghab Plain area in the Hama countryside.
Youssef is considered one of the most prominent names associated with the Al-Tadamon neighborhood massacre, after video recordings appeared years ago documenting mass executions carried out against civilian detainees, where the victims were handcuffed and blindfolded before being shot and thrown into a mass pit.
The scenes also showed women being killed in the same way, before the bodies were set on fire inside the hole, in an attempt to obscure the signs of the crime, while other footage showed officers bulldozing the place and scattering ash and debris over it to remove evidence.
Amjad Youssef held the rank of major within one of the intelligence units of the former Syrian regime’s army, and over the past years his name has become a symbol of terror in the Tadamon neighborhood, amid accounts of kidnappings, killings, and attacks committed against civilians.
In 2022, the British newspaper “The Guardian” quoted a former colleague of Youssef as saying that the latter confessed during a phone call to carrying out the killings, saying: “Yes, I did it.. This is what I should have done at that time.”
The former colleague also revealed that Youssef was causing terror in the area, noting that he was repeatedly kidnapping women from the streets of the Damascus suburb, and that a large number of them did not appear again, adding: “I saw him one morning taking women from the bread line… without them committing any sin.”
The Solidarity massacre is one of the files that caused widespread shock inside and outside Syria, after video recordings revealed the scale of violations committed during the years of war, amid continuing demands to reveal the fate of thousands of missing persons and hold those responsible for crimes committed against civilians accountable.
