Syria’s Internal Security Forces on April 24 arrested Amjad Youssef, principal suspect in a massacre of civilians in the Tadamon neighborhood of Damascus in April 2013. Footage emerged in 2022 showing Syrian soldiers leading captives, bound and blindfolded, to a pit before shooting them. The video became one of the most direct pieces of visual evidence of extrajudicial killings by forces of the Bashar Assad dictatorship, which was finally overthrown in December 2024. The leaked footage was released as part of an investigative report prepared by researchers from the Institute for War, Holocaust & Genocide Studies (NIOD) at the University of Amsterdam. Apprehended in a rural area of Hama province following a manhunt, Youssef appeared in the footage, and is believed to have been a member of the notorious Branch 227 of the Assad-era Military Intelligence Directorate. Estimates by the Syrian Network for Human Rights indicate that the death toll in the Tadamon massacre may exceed 450 people. (SNHR, BBC News)
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Photo: SNHR
Syria puts first Assad-era official on trial
Atef Najib, a cousin of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, went on trial in Damascus on April 24 over his alleged role in the March 2011 arrest and torture of teenagers in Daraa–one of the triggers of Syria’s uprising and the ensuing civil war. The trial marks Syria’s first public prosecution of a senior figure from the previous government, part of a broader push to prosecute Assad-era officials. (TNH)