A man identified by the Syrian Interior Ministry as Amjad Youssef, the main suspect in the Tadamon massacre. Photo taken from the Syrian Ministry's Facebook account.
Syrian authorities have arrested the main suspect in the 2013 Tadamon massacre in Damascus, where dozens of civilians were executed under the rule of Bashar al-Assad, the Interior Ministry said Friday.
In a statement, the ministry said it detained “the criminal Amjad Youssef,” describing him as the primary suspect in the killings. The arrest followed “several days of surveillance and pursuit” in al-Ghab plain in Hama countryside, about 180 kilometers north of Damascus.
Interior Minister Anas Khattab said in a post on X that Youssef “is now in our hands after a well-prepared security operation,” adding that authorities will continue efforts to track down other perpetrators and bring them to justice.
Youssef appeared in a video that surfaced several years ago showing uniformed men forcing handcuffed and blindfolded detainees to run before opening fire on them. The victims fell into a mass grave, where at least 41 bodies were piled up before being set ablaze.
In 2022, The Guardian reported that Youssef was still serving at the Kafr Sousa base in southwest Damascus as a warrant officer in Branch 227, one of Syria’s most feared military intelligence units. Former colleagues accused him of involvement in about a dozen additional massacres.
A few days after the fall of Assad on Dec. 8, 2024, teams from Human Rights Watch said they found “a significant number of bodies” in Tadamon. Residents of the neighborhood also reported other massacres carried out by government forces during the early years of the civil war.
The conflict, which began in 2011, killed more than half a million people. Syria’s new Islamist authorities say they have arrested several former officials accused of involvement in atrocities, including the Tadamon killings. The fate of tens of thousands of people remains unknown, with families continuing to demand accountability.
