Syrian Authorities Arrest Ex-Officer   04/24 06:09

   

   DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) -- Syrian authorities said Friday they have arrested a 
former intelligence officer who appeared in a video leaked four years ago that 
purportedly showed him and his comrades fatally shooting dozens of people 
during the country's conflict.

   Amjad Yousef was arrested in the central province of Hama, where he had been 
hiding, the Interior Ministry said, and posted a photo of him in a striped 
prison uniform.

   Since insurgents ousted former President Bashar Assad in December 2024, 
dozens of members of his security agencies that were blamed for atrocities 
during the conflict have been arrested. Assad fled to Russia.

   The conflict, that began with anti-government protests in March 2011 before 
turning into a civil war, has left half a million people dead and over 1 
million wounded.

   Yousef was one of several Syrian security agents who authorities said 
appeared in a video leaked in 2022, in which dozens of blindfolded, bound men 
were shot and thrown into a trench.

   The 6 minute and 43 second clip shows members of Syria's notorious Military 
Intelligence Branch 227 with a line of around 40 prisoners in an abandoned 
building in Tadamon, a suburb of Damascus near the Palestinian refugee camp of 
Yarmouk. For much of the war, the district was a front line between government 
forces and opposition fighters.

   The prisoners were blindfolded, with their arms tied behind their backs. One 
after another, the Branch 227 gunmen stand them at the edge of a trench filled 
with old tires, then push or kick the men in, shooting them as they fall.

   In the video, the intelligence agents tell some of the prisoners that they 
are going to pass through a sniper's alley and that they should run. The men 
tumble onto the bodies of those who went before them. As bodies pile up in the 
trench, some still move, and the gunmen shoot into the pile.

   The gunmen later set the bodies on fire, presumably to erase evidence of the 
massacre.

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

   The Interior Ministry said in its statement Friday that authorities will go 
after all those involved in the Tadamon shooting to bring them to justice.

   In March 2023, the U.S. State Department banned entry into the U.S. of 
Yousef, his wife and immediate members of his family.