Several prominent Syrian human rights organizations and civil society groups have urged the United States’ top diplomat to the United Nations to launch an investigation into the killing of 41 civilians in the neighborhood of Tadamon in Syria’s capital Damascus in 2013. “We are writing to demand immediate action to address this massacre, which amounts to a war crime, and hold perpetrators accountable at the UN Security Council,” read a letter to Linda Thomas-Greenfield and published by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) on Monday.
The network also called on the US to convene a meeting at the council during its presidency in May and launch an independent probe. The SNHR’s appeal comes nearly two weeks after a leaked video appeared to show evidence of gruesome crimes committed by Syrian forces. The distressing footage shows blindfolded and handcuffed civilians being told to run towards an execution ditch lying just in front of them in one of the capital’s southern suburbs. It also shows intelligence officers of the infamous Branch 227 smiling and laughing as they assassinate the men before pouring gasoline over their bodies in the pit and setting it ablaze to hide the evidence. The Tadamon district at the time was a battlefront between Syrian government forces and opposition forces. A horrified military recruit filmed the vicious incident and leaked the video, date-stamped April 16, 2013, after fleeing war-torn Syria. Syrian activists and international human rights organizations have accused the Syrian government and its allies of committing atrocities in the country’s uprising turned-civil war. Throughout the 11-year-long war, an estimated 500,000 people have been killed and millions displaced. Syria today is reeling from a crippling economic crisis, while President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus remains in power with military support from Russia, Iran, and the Lebanese Hezbollah.
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