Finding Mass Graves In Syria, Evidence Of Assad's Regime More Cruel Than Nazi?

JAKARTA - The discovery of mass graves in Syria has opened the veil of the "death machine" of the country under the ousted Bashar al-Assad regime

An international war crime prosecutor, Stephen Rapp, after visiting two mass grave locations in the cities of Qutayfah and Najha near Damascus, estimated more than 100,000 people had been tortured and killed since 2013.

"I have little doubt about the amount given what we have seen in this mass grave. We haven't seen anything like this since Nazi times," Rapp said.

Rapp is known to be a former US ambassador to war crimes leading prosecution in the war crimes courts of Rwanda and Sierra Leone.

He is also working with Syrian civil society to document evidence of war crimes and help prepare all possibilities related to the trial.

"From secret police who remove people from the streets and their homes, to guards and interogators who make them starving and torture to death, truckers and bulldozers who hide their bodies. Thousands of people work in this murder system," said Rapp.

"We are talking about the country's terror system, which is the engine of death," he continued.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are thought to have been killed since 2011, as the Assad regime crackdown on those protesting to lead to a full-scale war.

Both Assad and his father, Hafez, who preceded him as president and died in 2000, have long been accused of unlawful killings of human rights groups, including mass executions within the country's prison system, and the use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people.

Assad, who fled to Russia after rebel groups toppled his regime, has repeatedly denied the government he led committed human rights violations and branded its critics as extremists.

The head of the US-based Syrian advocacy organization Syrian Emergency Task Force, Mouaz Moustafa, who also visited mass graves in Qutayfah City, also estimated at least 100,000 bodies buried there.

The International Commission for Missing Persons in The Hague separately said it had received data showing the possibility of 66 mass grave locations in Syria that had not been verified. With more than 157,000 people have been reported missing to the commission.

The head of the commission, Kathryne Bombberger, said that her website, which houses reports for missing people, is now "exploding". Many people to families have reported.

In comparison, says Bombberger, about 40,000 people were missing during the 1990s Balkan war. For families, the search for truth in Syria can be long and difficult. DNA matching will require at least three relatives who provide DNA reference samples and sample DNA from each skeleton found in the cemetery.

The commission also requested that the findings of mass graves in Syria be protected so that evidence can be kept for potential trials. That's because the mass graves can be easily accessed on Tuesday this week.

The US State Department on Tuesday said its country was working with a number of UN agencies ensuring the Syrian people would get answers and accountability for the discovery of the mass grave.

Residents' Testimony

Abb Khalid, a resident who lives near one of the mass burial sites in the city of Qutayfah, as well as a former military base and location for Najha's burial, said the truck had kept coming to dispose of a cargo filled with corpses into a long ditch excavated with a bulldozer.

"The graves are organized - trucks will come, unload their cargo, and leave. There are security vehicles with them, and no one is allowed to approach, anyone who approaches is used to getting off with them," said Abb Khalid, who works as a farmer next to Najha's cemetery.

In Qutayfah City, other residents refused to speak in front of the camera or use their names for fear of threats. They think the area is not safe even though Assad has been dropped.

"This is a terrible place," said one resident.