President of the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC), Salem al-Meslet, stressed the importance of the testimony given by an anonymous whistleblower known as “the gravedigger” before the US Senate. He called for an urgent, serious action to overthrow the Assad regime and save the Syrian people from its continuing criminality.
Al-Meslet blasted the international community’s failure to hold the Assad regime accountable despite the trove of evidence proving its involvement in war crimes and genocide.
Mass graves are still being dug in Syria today, filled with victims of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the whistleblower told US senators during a congressional hearing about the conflict on Wednesday.
The gravedigger spoke of the horrors he witnessed working as one of the civilian workers at a mass grave site in Syria from 2011 to 2018.
While the gravedigger left Syria in 2018, he said he has spoken with others who fled the country more recently, and said they told him the mass graves are still being dug.
Before the war, the gravedigger worked as an “administrative employee at the Damascus municipality,” but, in 2011, the “regime intelligence officials” visited his office and ordered him to work for them.
“Every week, twice a week, three trailer trucks arrived packed with 300 to 600 bodies of victims of torture, bombardment and slaughter. Twice a week, three to four pickup trucks with 30 to 40 bodies of civilians that had been executed in Sednaya prison also arrived for disposal in the most inhumane way,” the gravedigger said.
“In some, I know exactly where they are piled up into mass graves that are still being dug today. I know this because others who have worked with me on the mass graves have recently escaped and confirmed what we have been hearing.”
The gravedigger recounted horrors of his time working at the mass grave sites. In one instance, a man who was dumped from a trailer truck with other dead bodies made a movement, signaling he was still alive.
“One of the civilian workers said, started crying, said that we had to do something,” the gravedigger said. “The intelligence officer supervising us ordered the bulldozer driver to run him over, the driver could not hesitate or else he would have been next. He ran over the man in the trenches, killing him. As for the young man in our workshop who dared to shed tears over the victim of Assad’s regime, we never saw him again.”
The gravedigger called on the senators to “take action.” “Although hundreds of thousands have already been murdered and disappeared and millions displaced, the worst is still yet to come. It can be prevented. But I beg of you do not wait a second longer. I beg of you to take action,” the gravedigger said.
(Source: SOC’s Media Department)
