Authorities have accused Al-Assad and his father, Hafez, of carrying out numerous unlawful killings, including mass executions.
Since 2011, when al-Assad’s assault on anti-government protesters erupted into a full-fledged civil war, it is claimed that hundreds of thousands of Syrians have perished.
According to the director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a mass grave outside Damascus contains the dead of at least 100,000 individuals slaughtered by deposed President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Mouaz Moustafa told Reuters that the site near al-Qutayfah, 40 kilometers north of the Syrian capital, was one of five mass graves he has discovered over the years.
Moustafa stated that “one hundred thousand is the most conservative estimate” for the number of dead buried at the location.
“It’s a very, very extremely, almost unfairly, conservative estimate.”
Moustafa went on to say that there are other mass graves containing Syrian victims, as well as foreigners.
Syrians, human rights groups, and foreign countries accuse Al-Assad and his father, Hafez, who served as president before him and died in 2000, of widespread extrajudicial killings, including mass executions within the country’s well-known prison system.
Al-Assad repeatedly denied that his regime violated human rights and portrayed his critics as “extremists.”
The new Syrian government promises to punish all those involved in torture and killings under the Assad regime.