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, which 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.
U.S. special envoy to Syria Tom Barrack posted on X that the arrest was "a powerful step away from impunity toward accountability, exemplifying the new paradigm of justice emerging in post-Assad Syria: one rooted in the rule of law, national reconciliation, and the equal application of justice regardless of past affiliations.”
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.
FILE - This frame grab from a 2013 video, shows a Syrian soldier firing into a large pit full of bodies, in the Tadamon neighborhood of Damascus, Syria. (AP Photo, File)
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Judges at the International Criminal Court on Thursday confirmed charges of crimes against humanity against former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte for deadly anti-drug crackdowns he allegedly oversaw while in office.
A three-judge panel found unanimously there were “substantial grounds” to believe the ex-leader was responsible for dozens of murders, first as mayor of the southern Philippine city of Davao and later when he was president.
Duterte, who served as president from 2016 to 2022, was arrested in the Philippines last year and flown to The Hague, where the global court is located. He denies the charges against him.
In their 50-page decision, judges found that the evidence shows that Duterte, 81, “developed, disseminated and implemented” a policy “to ‘neutralize’ alleged criminals.”
According to prosecutors, police and hit squad members carried out dozens of murders at Duterte’s behest starting in 2011, motivated by the promise of money or to avoid becoming targets themselves.
“For some, killing reached the level of a perverse form of competition,” deputy prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang told the court in pretrial hearings in February.
Estimates of the death toll during Duterte’s presidential term vary, from the more than 6,000 that the national police have reported to up to 30,000 claimed by human rights groups.
Prosecutors said in a statement on Wednesday that the decision “represents a significant milestone” in their effort to bring accountability.
Duterte's lead defense lawyer Nick Kaufman told The Associated Press he was disappointed in the decision, saying it “is based on the uncorroborated statements of vicious self-confessed murderers acting as cooperating witnesses.”
A date for the start of the trial has not yet been set.
Duterte has not been present in the courtroom for any hearings, having waived his right to appear. Last month judges found he was fit to stand trial, after postponing an earlier hearing over concerns about his health.
In the Philippines, families of slain victims in the brutal anti-drugs crackdown rejoiced over the decision, saying it will bring them closer to justice and toward a closure of a tragic chapter in their lives.
“This is for all the victims, who were not even given the chance to be recognized as victims because their stories were twisted in police reports, investigations and findings,” said Randy delos Santos, whose nephew, Kian delos Santos, was gunned down in an alley in August 2017 by three police officers.
“Unlike Kian, most other victims were nameless, voiceless and were just numbers and statistics whose horrific stories were never heard. Now the ICC will give their stories a chance to be told,” delos Santos told the AP.
Human rights groups also praised the decision.
“Duterte’s trial will send a powerful message that no one responsible for grave crimes is above the law, whether in the Philippines or elsewhere, and that justice will eventually catch up with them,” said Maria Elena Vignoli, senior international justice counsel at Human Rights Watch.
ICC prosecutors said in 2018 that they would open a preliminary investigation into the violent drug crackdowns. In a move that human rights activists say was aimed at avoiding accountability, Duterte, who was president at the time, announced a month later that the Philippines would leave the court.
On Tuesday, appeals judges rejected a request from Duterte’s legal team to throw out the case on the grounds that the court did not have jurisdiction because of the Philippine withdrawal.
In October, judges disqualified the court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan from the case, citing a “reasonable appearance of bias” because he represented victims of Duterte’s alleged crimes before he took office at the ICC. Khan had already stepped back from his duties pending the outcome of an independent investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct.
Associated Press journalist Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines contributed to this report.
FILE - In this Oct. 26, 2016 file photo, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte delivers a speech at the Philippine Economic Forum in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)
