Syrian commission prepares war crimes case against notorious Assad official | Syria

The Syrian rights commission is preparing a case accusing Fadi Saqr, the militia leader within the Assad regime, of involvement in crimes against humanity and war crimes, a senior Syrian official told the Guardian.

Saqr is a former commander of the National Defense Forces (NDF) militia and is widely accused of being involved in the mass murder and enforced disappearance of civilians in the Tadamon neighborhood of Damascus and other parts of the Syrian capital.

Following the overthrow of Syria’s former president, Bashar al-Assad, in December 2024, Syria’s new government cooperated with Saqr on security dossiers, causing outrage among victims seeking accountability for the alleged crimes.

Zahra al-Barazi, deputy head of the National Commission for Interim Justice and adviser to the Syrian foreign ministry, said the commission was working with victims to build a case against Saqr. Although the commission was appointed by the Syrian government, it is an independent body that will forward its findings to the Syrian judiciary and decide whether to pursue the case.

The trial against the former militia commander would be a major milestone for Syria, which is grappling with how to establish transitional justice after more than a decade of war that has left hundreds of thousands of people dead and towns and neighborhoods torn apart. Experts said a proper transitional justice process could help prevent inter-communal violence in the country, which has seen sectarian massacres and occasional killings since Assad’s ouster.

Al-Barazi said: “There is certainly sufficient evidence against Saqr. We are also working with organizations that document a lot of this. It was useful for certain reasons and it is no longer useful. No one is above the law.”

Last week, Syrian authorities arrested Amjad Youssef, one of the main perpetrators of the Tadamon massacres.

Videos found on the former intelligence officer’s laptop and leaked out of the country documented the killing of approximately 300 civilians by regime forces in Tadamon in 2013. In 2022, The Guardian published a selection of footage showing Youssef pushing blindfolded civilians into a pit, executing them, and burning their bodies while ordering them to run forward and firing at them.

Although Youssef became infamous because of the videos, Tadamon residents have long insisted that there were many more perpetrators, including members of the NDF led by Saqr. During celebrations of Yusuf’s arrest on Friday, calls were made for Saqr to be detained.

Ahmed al-Homsi, 33, an activist with the Tadamon Coordination Committee, a network that documented the massacres, said: “Compared to Fadi Saqr, Amjad was just a foot soldier. In Tadamon, nothing happened without Fadi Saqr’s orders, whether robberies, arrests, disappearances or murders. He was in control, he knew everything.”

Saqr denied responsibility for the massacres. He told the Guardian he “only learned about the massacre through the media” and said he “trusted the judicial process”.

“Anyone who is proven to have committed crimes against humanity should be punished,” he said. “My silence regarding the campaigns against me stems from my desire not to influence the course of the investigations.”

Saqr said he was an NDF commander in Damascus in June 2013, two months after public footage of Yusuf executing civilians in the pit was recorded. However, the Guardian reviewed unreleased videos of additional killings carried out by Youssef and NDF personnel, including footage shot in October 2013, four months into Saqr’s tenure.

Prof. is one of the academics from Amsterdam who obtained the videos and leaked excerpts of them to the Guardian. Uğur Ümit Üngör said: “What is now described as the Tadamon massacre was not a single event, but a process of mass murder that took place throughout 2013 and in the following years. NDF participated in these atrocities and Saqr was part of the chain of command, regardless of his personal involvement.”

Tadamon residents and other Syrians have long expressed anger at the new government’s cooperation with Saqr. Maher Rahima, 31, who experienced the atrocities, said: “If the officials of the new government had seen what I saw in Tadamon, heard the sounds of torture and smelled the burning corpses, they would have been ashamed to look at themselves in the mirror after protecting Fadi Saqr and other criminals.”

The government justified working with figures like Saqr by saying it was trying to balance the need for justice with pragmatic considerations to ensure Syria’s stability during the transition period. Saqr helped the government establish contact Remnants of the Assad regime Those who have launched a low-level rebellion since the ouster of the former Syrian president.

Plans to file a lawsuit against Saqr have been in motion for several months, Al-Barazi said, during which time the political cost of keeping the former militia leader on board has increased.

“I think there’s a real recognition that it’s not worth it when the gains to be made from it are balanced by the tension it creates among the public,” he said, adding that Youssef’s arrest “helped bring this to the fore.”

Al-Barazi visited Tadamon residents on Tuesday, inviting them to join forces to file a lawsuit against Saqr and explaining how the commission will ensure witness protection. “We said we would help them come together in the case against Fadi Saqr,” he said. “That means there will be a request for his arrest.”

It is ultimately the responsibility of the Syrian judiciary, not the commission, to issue such an arrest warrant, but al-Barazi said he had “heard no resistance” to plans to file charges.

In Tadamon, the prospect of Saqr facing justice has given new hope to people who have seen their neighborhood become a killing field and feel little has been achieved in terms of accountability. Al-Homsi said: “The arrest of Fadi Saqr would be much bigger than the arrest of Amjad Youssef. It would be like a second day of liberation.”