Enab Baladi – Jana al-Issa

A number of Syrian activists on social media and some Arab media outlets rushed to known mass grave sites in Syria, and videos surfaced showing the exhumation of graves and the disturbing of buried bodies.

The dissemination of these recordings led many families of the missing and disappeared, who have been unable to ascertain the fate of their loved ones, to reach various sites driven by the desire to search for their relatives by identifying them through their clothing or features.

The activity of the de facto authorities or international and local organizations appeared to be almost absent in addressing this file, as media personnel and activists were not prevented from accessing mass graves sites. Families continue to reach these locations with little to no organized search efforts that lack any scientific or medical methodology.

Violation of the crime scene distorts truth

Mohammad al-Abdallah, the director of the Syria Justice and Accountability Center (SJAC), stated that tampering with mass graves in Syria in this manner constitutes a violation of the crime scene and obliterates evidence, complicating the efforts of those searching for the missing and the specialists responsible for identifying the victims contained within these graves.

Al-Abdallah added, in an interview with Enab Baladi, that the process of exhuming mass graves is typically accompanied by a forensic and criminal investigation, during which the bodies are separated and their gender identified, establishing the context of the mass grave, measuring the length of the buried individual through the femur, in addition to determining the cause of death (hands tied, hands behind back, gunshot wound to the head).

Therefore, the unscientific and inexperienced method of exhuming graves leads to the loss of the crime scene’s features and complicates the work of those searching for evidence in an attempt to identify the corpses.

Al-Abdallah emphasized that simply separating the bones among these bodies without mixing them is a laborious and challenging task that intertwines the work of forensic specialists and medical practitioners. Thus, unskilled exhumation of graves could destroy these pieces of evidence and deprive us of the opportunity to identify these individuals.

Forensic expert and consultant working in the forensic department in Azaz, Aleppo countryside, Dr. Mohammad Kahil, also confirmed that exhumation of mass graves may alter the features of the corpses, making identification impossible and resulting in inconclusive and unreliable evidence to ascertain the victims’ identities.

The tampering and exhumation of mass graves in this manner could force experts to resort to two unavailable methods: firstly, conducting DNA testing to identify the corpses, which is not feasible today in Syria due to its cost and complexity; and secondly, extracting samples from the corpses and analyzing them outside Syria, a process considered very arduous and expensive, with risks of losing these samples.

Playing with emotions

Raed al-Saleh, director of the Syria Civil Defence (The White Helmets), confirmed that the random exhumation of mass graves could result in the mixing of bones, complicating the specialists’ task in determining the age of the grave and the identity of the corpses, thereby hindering institutions later on from achieving justice for the victims.

Al-Saleh noted in a conversation with Enab Baladi that this situation negatively impacts the emotions and feelings of the families of the missing, who are the first to rush to mass graves. He believes that blame today lies with those individuals who announce the discovery of graves, including activists and journalists, providing random sites and numbers regarding the buried.

Armed protection and media exclusion

Regarding the necessary precautions that should be followed today amid the chaos surrounding the mass graves issue in Syria, human rights activist Mohammad al-Abdallah stated that the existing de facto authorities must secure protection for these graves, even if it requires armed protection, surrounding them with barbed wire or restricting access, in addition to prohibiting the publication of their locations.

He explained that media coverage or activist documentation of mass grave sites in this manner should be prohibited, emphasizing that more than one activist or media outlet has been directly filming the exhumation of graves, which violates the sanctity of the corpses and the victims and incites people to approach and exhume the graves.

There is no benefit today in exhuming mass graves without conducting a scientific investigation accompanied by an extraction process. What is happening now could destroy this evidence.

Human rights activist Mohammad al-Abdallah

Al-Abdallah stressed that these graves should not be opened or approached without establishing either a national committee to search for the missing, with the task of opening the mass graves, or initiating an organized operation under the Ministry of Justice, similar to what happened in Iraq and Erbil and the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

Syria Civil Defence: No sufficient personnel

Recently, the Syria Civil Defence team issued awareness recommendations regarding the media coverage of mass graves, due to the sensitive nature of the topic and its humanitarian, psychological, social, and legal impacts as evidenced by what is being circulated on social media from videos of these sites.

Regarding the Civil Defence’s capacity to protect these graves, team director Raed al-Saleh clarified that the team is currently unable to operate in protecting these sites for several reasons, the most significant being a lack of sufficient resources, including human resources, along with pressing priorities that require preserving lives through rescue, medical, and firefighting teams.

The team is currently working with the same number of personnel it had in northwestern Syria and is awaiting donors to increase human resources to cover urgent missions across the entirety of Syrian geography.

There is no complete count of the number of mass graves in Syria. In an investigation by The New York Times, in collaboration with the Association of Detainees and The Missing in Saydnaya Prison (ADMSP), it was able through witnesses to identify the locations of two mass graves, believed to contain thousands of bodies of Syrians who were subjected to detention.

One witness, who worked before 2011 in burying civilians and was later conscripted by intelligence officers to dispose of the bodies coming from detention centers, continued this work for six years. He claimed that the first grave he worked in from mid-2011 until early 2013 was located in the town of Najha south of Damascus.

In early 2013, the regime established a new mass grave near a Syrian army base in the town of al-Qutayfah north of Damascus, according to his statements, adding that at times during the six years he worked in mass graves, his team would empty two trucks about twice a week, each carrying between 150 to 600 bodies.