This report contains graphic photos and descriptions
By Tareq Khelo
(Zaman Al Wasl) Berlin- The 30th session in the trial of former intelligence colonel Anwar Raslan, and Eyad al-Gharib, a low-ranking intelligence officer, has uncovered dangerous information and horrific testimonies that echoed the shaking revelations of the photographs leaked by “Caesar”.
The session was divided in two consecutive days, due to the abundance of information that the witness provided and which started a long debate between the defense team and the judges about revealing the face of the witness in order to verify his identity and monitor his expressions during his testimony.
The defense team referred to a paragraph from German law that supports their demand, but the judges' panel responded with another legal text that allows the witness anonymity by hiding their face to ensure their safety. Thus, the debate was settled and the witness kept his mask on.
“To Make It Easy”
On the morning of September 9, in the presence of the Judges, Prosecution and Defense, as well as both Raslan and Al-Gharib, and a group of activists and media professionals, the witness, who was given the moniker Z-30/07/19, entered the courtroom and, in a heavily accented dialect, spoke for hours, for the court to confirm his testimony with what he has already told the German police twice before.
The witness was then requested to tell the attendees about the burials he participated in. and here, Z-30 painted a general picture of what he had been doing during the years of revolution, which he called “the crisis”, starting in the fall of 2011, when intelligence officers were assigned to the Damascus government department, specialized in burying the dead.
On that same day, with direct orders from intelligence services, the witness formed a “work team” of 15 people, which he supervised and for nearly 6 years (until 2017), buried large numbers of victims who died under torture, in two large mass graves.
At the beginning of his “work”, intelligence officers would take him to Tishreen Hospital and Harasta Military Hospital, to collect the bodies. However, later when the amount of work doubled, they provided him with an official “mission” and a 14-passebger Nissan van without plates, decorated in the front and the back with two pictures of “president Bashar al-Assad”–to quote the witness–, which provided him with a free unobstructed pass through every barrier and checkpoint.
Between 4 and 5 a.m., 4 days a week, Z-30 went out in that van to collect his “work team” from several neighborhoods in Damascus, before heading to the burial site specified for them that day, either in Najha (about 18 km south of Damascus ), or on the outskirts of Al-Qatifah (about 40 km north of Damascus), where refrigerated trucks filled with corpses waited for them.
According to Z-30’s testimony, one refrigerated truck held between 500 and 700 corpses, while the smaller ones carried about 300. Sometimes one truck was in the site while other times there were up to three at once, and considering they did this 4 times a week, it brings the estimate to around 4,000 bodies buried by the regime per week. The witness also mentioned that the trucks were around 11 meters long, coming twice a week from the military hospitals and Sednaya prison, as well as once or twice a month from the smaller hospitals like Al Mujtahid, and Al Mouwasat.
The witness said that they worked nonstop “without rest or vacation.” His duty as the supervisor of the burial team was to record the number of bodies according to the branches they came from then hand the table to the officer assigned to oversee the burial process.
“Work” in the intelligence dictionary
While the witness elaborately provided the most detailed information about the names of intelligence branches and number of bodies, Colonel Raslan watched with interest, writing down some points of the testimony, while Eyad al-Gharib sat back wearing a medical mask.
The judge asked the witness, “What did you record?”
“I used to write the branch's name and number,” he answers. “The bodies came naked, with stickers on their foreheads or chests, with a number and a symbol written on them. It was different with Sednaya prison, however, since the burials were on the same day of execution.”
When the judge inquired about receiving bodies from Section 40, headed by Hafez Makhlouf and where al-Gharib used to work, Z-30 replied, “Yes, State Security Branch, Al-Khatib Branch, State Security Department, Section 40, Palestine Branch, Political Security, Area Branch, Patrols Branch, Company 215, and Air Force Intelligence all sent bodies.”
Judge: “From which branch were the largest numbers coming?”
Witness: “I used to hear the officers say, ‘today the State Security Branch worked’.”
Judge: “What do you mean by that?”
Witness: “It means that they sent large numbers.”
Despite the large numbers of bodies sent from various branches, only two burial sites were chosen, reaching around 200 meters in length, 4 meters in width, and 6 meters in depth, dug by a Bagger excavator.
The “burial team” would enter the graveyard after being thoroughly searched to ensure none carried any communication devices or cameras, to be met with appalling, grotesque scenes and smells.
The doors of the refrigerated trucks were opened–the witness recalled, “Shhhhh ... it sounded like you opened a gas bottle.” Then comes the awful, unescapable stench that latches into his nose and memory to this day. “The smell of corpses has nested in my nose; I could never get rid of it, even though I tried everything, perfumes, disinfectants... I couldn’t eat because of it, but after a while it became part of me.” He continues, “I saw rivers of blood and maggots... The first time, I could not eat for several days.”
A judge asked the witness to describe the bodies and their state in details, while Colonel Anwar Raslan continued to listen with great concentration and al-Gharib held his head back, preferring to close his eyes.
The corpses came naked and bruised, the witness explained, some had their toe and/or fingernails pulled and some missed parts of their bodies. Some of their faces were mutilated, as if by chemical substances, to obscure their features, while others arrived in heaps, boneless masses that resembled goo.
The corpses that came from Sednaya prison were quite different from other branches and hospitals, they were still naked but did not smell because they were recent, with telltale signs of the methods of execution. The hands of the victims, whom the witness kept calling “corpses”, were tied back either with iron or plastic handcuffs. According to the witness, it was easier for him to approach the bodies coming from Sednaya, but they still haunted him in his nightmares as much as the others.
“Did you conclude that they executed [the Sednaya victims] on the same day yourself?” a judge asked.
Z-30 said that the supervising officer informed them that they were executed at 12 or 1 a.m. inside the prison and because the burial begins around 5 a.m. that same day, the bodies were still warm. One time the witness had discovered that one of them had been alive and breathing, so the officer ordered them to be run over with a bulldozer.
When a judge asked about the names of the intelligence officers under whom they were working, the witness’s lawyer objected that answering the question may reveal the identity of the witness to the public. The witness has previously named the intelligence officer on record during police investigation.
A Degrading Burial
Z-30 then explained the process and methods of burial, with someone tilting the back part of the truck to unload it, “The workers go in and start pushing the bodies,” which roll down to the pit to pile on top of each other. Then, the “trax” bulldozer pours dirt over the section full of bodies until they are covered. Then it starts again, until all the corpses are buried.
Judge: “Was the pit filled in one day?”
Witness: “Depending on the numbers, sometimes it only takes one day, and sometimes it takes several. The pit is different in size each time.”
Two drivers for all cemeteries
At about 9 a.m., the witness and his team return to Damascus, with the smell of rotting corpses following them. Some wore masks sometimes, with or without aprons and gloves, but sometimes they had to do it without any protection. “There were no alcohol for sterilization nor changes of clothes,” the witness said. As a result, some of his “team” became seriously ill, and some died.
At the judge’s inquiry, Z-30 confirmed that there are other graves belonging to the 4th Division and the Air Force in Mezzeh airport, explaining that he learned of these graves from the drivers of the Bagger and the trax who worked on these sites, too.
Repeated Nervous Breakdowns
The witness spent more than 3 hours talking about the “mission” entrusted to him by the Assad intelligence
services between 2011 and 2017, during which he described many horrific scenes and experiences, despite his exhausted tone. However, at 3 p.m., when one of the judges asked him if there were any women and children among the bodies, he reached his breaking point. “There were women, and little girls and boys,” he bitterly recalled, recounting the time he found, under a pile of corpses, the body of a woman, her arms wrapped around her dead child in one last embrace. “They died together, it seems... That day I could not bear it, I collapsed,” this confession seemed to bring the witness to his breaking point, indeed collapsing then and there, while court members hurried towards him. His lawyer explained that his client was very exhausted and had hypotension, prompting the judges to adjourn the session to a second day, which Zaman al-Wasl will report on next.
As the session was adjourned, the attendees began to leave the courtroom one by one. Anwar Raslan immediately went out with the police members assigned to guard him, while another police officer stood in front of Eyad al-Gharib asking him to present his hand to handcuff him. Al-Gharib muttered a word that neither policeman nor I, who stood two meters away from him with only a low wooden table between us, could not understand. The policeman then turned towards me after noticing Eyad looking at me, and asked me to leave the room immediately as today’s session was over. It sounds so simple: “over”. But in reality, this is only the beginning, as long as the Holocaust caused by Assad and his criminals continues, as long as the regime’s insatiable collective graves are still agape, and as long as impunity prevails.
Zaman Al Wasl
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