BBC: Skulls and body bags: Searching for Syria's disappeared

[Dennis Donovan]

BBC - Skulls and body bags: Searching for Syria's disappeared

21 hours ago

Lucy Williamson



Adra is a strange kind of neighbourhood cemetery – two lone graves sit in an empty expanse of bumpy earth, sparsely covered with grass.

For years, this was an area tightly controlled by President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

Now, a week after they fled, a concrete slab in one corner of this empty cemetery has been moved to reveal a shallow grave containing at least half a dozen white bags, labelled with names and prison numbers.

Khaled al Hamad, a nearby resident, was desperately pulling the bags out when we arrived.

He shows us the three he has already opened. Each contains a human skull and bones. The writing on the sacks suggest they are the remains of two female prisoners, and one male.

/snip

I fear there's hundreds, maybe thousands more buried in mass graves. Assad was a fucking butcher.

[Passages]

1. Indeed a butcher.