Syria arrests former intelligence officer behind 2013 Damascus massacre

Syria has arrested the main suspect in the 2013 Tadamon massacre, when soldiers of the former government murdered dozens of civilians in the Damascus neighborhood, the interior ministry says.

In a statement, the ministry says it had arrested former intelligence officer Amjad Youssef, who appeared in a leaked video ordering handcuffed, blindfolded men to run, then opening fire on them.

The victims are seen falling into a mass grave where 41 bodies pile up and are then burned.

A few days after the fall in December 2024 of Syria’s former autocratic ruler Bashar al-Assad, Human Rights Watch teams discovered what they called “a significant number of bodies” in Tadamon.

Families from the neighbourhood also informed the new authorities of several more massacres committed by Assad’s forces during the early years of the civil war.

Last year, security forces in Syria said that they arrested three people involved in the same killings.

The interior ministry says in its statement that authorities will go after all those involved in the Tadamon shooting to bring them to justice.

In a social media post, Interior Minister Anas Khattab says “the criminal Amjad Youssef is now in our hands after a well-prepared security operation.”

The Syrian civil war that broke out in 2011 has claimed more than half a million lives.

The new Islamist authorities have announced the arrest of several officials from the former government, but the fate of tens of thousands of people remains unknown.