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

Maggie Michael, Feras Dalati, Ryan McNeil and Khalil Ashavi

DUMAIR, Syria – Assad's government carried out a two-year covert operation to move thousands of bodies from one of Syria's largest known mass graves to a secret location more than an hour's drive away in the remote desert, a Reuters investigation has found.

A plot by President Bashar al-Assad's military to excavate a mass grave in Qutayf and create a huge second mass grave in the desert near the town of Dumayr has not previously been reported.

To find out the location of Dumayr's grave and detail the massive operation, Reuters spoke to 13 people with direct knowledge of the two-year effort to move the bodies, reviewed documents submitted by officials involved and analyzed hundreds of satellite images of both graves taken over several years.

The operation to transfer the bodies from Qutaifa to another hidden location tens of kilometers away was called “Operation Move Earth” and lasted from 2019 to 2021. The purpose of the operation was to cover up the crimes of the Assad government and help restore its image, witnesses said.

On Tuesday, Reuters informed the government of President Ahmed al-Sharaa of the results of the investigation. The government did not immediately respond to questions for this report.

The news agency is not revealing the exact location of the site here to reduce the possibility that intruders might tamper with the grave. An upcoming special report from Reuters will detail how the Assad government carried out the covert operation and how reporters uncovered the scheme.

The tomb in the Dumayr desert, with at least 34 trenches 2 kilometers long, is one of the most extensive created during the Syrian civil war, according to Reuters. Eyewitness accounts and the size of the new site suggest that tens of thousands of people may have been buried there.

Assad's government began burying those killed in Qutayf around 2012, at the start of the civil war. According to eyewitnesses, the mass grave contained the bodies of soldiers and prisoners who died in the dictator's prisons and military hospitals.

A Syrian human rights activist exposed Qutayfa by publishing photographs to local media in 2014, revealing the existence of the grave and its general location on the outskirts of Damascus. His exact location became known several years later through court testimony and other media reports.

According to witnesses involved in the operation, for four nights almost every week from February 2019 to April 2021, six to eight trucks filled with soil and human remains traveled from Qutaifa to the Dumayr desert. Reuters could not confirm whether the bodies arrived from other locations at the secret site, and did not find any documents mentioning Operation Move Earth or mass graves in general.

Everyone directly involved in the stench remembered the stench well, including two truck drivers, three mechanics, a bulldozer operator and a former officer in Assad's elite Republican Guard who had been involved since the early days of the transfer.

Former President Assad, who is in Russia, and several military officials who witnesses said played key roles in the operation could not be reached for comment. After the dictatorship fell late last year, Assad and many of his aides fled the country.

The idea to move thousands of bodies emerged in late 2018, when Assad was on the verge of winning the Syrian civil war, a former Republican Guard officer said. The dictator was hoping to regain international recognition after years of sanctions and accusations of brutality, the officer said. At that time, Assad was already accused of detaining thousands of Syrians. But none of the independent Syrian groups or international organizations had access to prisons and mass graves.

Two truck drivers and an officer told Reuters that military commanders told them the purpose of the transfer was to clear Qutayfa's mass grave and hide evidence of the massacre.

By the time Assad fell, all 16 trenches recorded by Reuters in Qutaif had been emptied.

More than 160,000 people have disappeared within the ousted dictator's vast security apparatus and are believed to be buried in dozens of mass graves he created, according to Syrian human rights groups. Organized excavations and DNA testing could help trace what happened to them, easing one of Syria's most vexing problems.

But with few resources in Syria, even known mass graves remain largely unprotected and unexcavated. And the country's new leaders, who overthrew Assad in December, have not released any documentation of the people buried there, despite repeated calls from the families of the missing.

Syrian Minister of Emergency Situations and Disaster Relief Raed al-Saleh said the large number of victims and the need to restore the justice system were hampering work. Syria's new National Commission for Missing Persons has announced plans to create a DNA bank and a centralized digital platform for families of missing persons, and said there is an urgent need for training in forensic science and DNA testing.

“The wound remains bleeding while there are mothers waiting to find the graves of their sons, wives waiting to find the graves of their husbands and children waiting to find the graves of their fathers,” al-Saleh told the semi-official Syrian news site Al-Watan in late August.

Mohamed al-Abdallah, head of the Syrian Center for Justice and Accountability, a Syrian organization that searches for missing people and investigates war crimes, said haphazard transfers of bodies like the one from Qutaifa to Dumayr had a disastrous impact on grieving families.

“Putting these bodies back together so that complete remains can be returned to the families will be extremely difficult,” Al Abdallah said after hearing the findings from Reuters. He called the creation of a commission to search for missing people a positive step by the new government.

“It has political support, but it still lacks resources and experts,” he said.

Drivers, mechanics and others involved in the transport said speaking out during an undercover operation meant certain death.

“No one will obey the order,” one driver said. “You yourself may end up in the pits.”

(Reporting by Maggie Michael, Feras Dalati and Khalil Ashavi in ​​Dumair, Syria, and Ryan McNeil in London. Photos by Khalil Ashavi. Editing by Laurie Hinnant.)