DAMASCUS, Syria – The crowd pushed forward, thousands cheering, waving and jostling around Al-Ashmar Square in Damascus, all positioning themselves to get the best view of an execution.
“Hurry up,” a mother scolded her child as they walked along the side of the road. “We don’t want to be late.”
A fire truck approached, triggering a chorus of shouts from those who believed a convict was inside. Young men rushed the truck, hoping to catch a glimpse of Saleh al-Ras, an enforcer of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who was overthrown by rebels this month after 13 years of civil war.
Al-Ras led a militia that provided security in the Tadamon district, just outside Damascus. He is widely believed to be responsible for numerous atrocities there, including a massacre in 2013 that killed nearly 300 people. The people of Tadamon have a nickname for the henchman with the toothbrush mustache: “Syria’s Hitler.”
“That man, him and his people, they were animals,” said Majed Shaaban, 32, who works for a cleaning company. “I came to see him die.”
A crowd gathers after hearing that a militia commander is to be publicly hanged.
Shaaban and the rest of the crowd would eventually leave the court in disappointment.
Syria's new leaders have promised justice for a population terrorized for decades by a government that imprisoned people, disappeared, tortured, killed and used sexual violence as a weapon of war. But in keeping with the rebels' quest for international legitimacy, they have also vowed to achieve it through the rule of law, although prosecutions could take years.
This time frame is unlikely to satisfy ordinary Syrians clamoring for revenge.
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Just days after the rebel victory, pro-rebel activists reported that Al-Ras was one of several people arrested in a nationwide dragnet by the Interim Security Agency led by the rebel faction Hayat Tahrir al Sham.
Government officials did not confirm whether Al-Ras had been captured, but news soon spread throughout Tadamon that he was to be publicly hanged.
While awaiting the execution in Al-Ashmar Square last week, people in the crowd explained why they wanted to witness Al-Ras' execution.
“If he wanted a woman he saw at the checkpoint, he would arrest her husband and threaten to kill him if she didn't let him rape her,” said a woman in her 30s.
The woman said that four of her relatives, including her uncle and nephew, had been kidnapped by Al-Ras' men and that they were almost certainly dead.
“I won’t tell you my name or my age – I’m too scared,” she said. How could she be sure that the militia commander would not somehow return to power? “Anyone could give information about you; the grocer, the restaurant waiter, the neighbor – everyone.
“It’s only been a week without her,” she said. “We need time to get used to this new life.”
Beside her, a 62-year-old man, also too afraid to give his name, agreed that Al-Ras was a perpetrator of rape and murder.
“Sometimes he would just shoot the husband, rape the wife and then shoot her too,” he said. “If they laid this man on the ground in front of us, all the women of Tadamon would jump on him and tear him to pieces.”
A man searches rubble for human remains in the Tadamon district on the outskirts of Damascus.
After a few hours, with no sign of Al-Ras, the bearded militants maintaining order told people there would be no execution for two days until Friday after midday prayers. The crowd reluctantly dispersed.
But when Friday came, news spread that there would be no execution after all. The hanging was a rumor.
An Interior Ministry official who was not authorized to speak to the media said the government had no plans to execute former officials without trial.
“There are a lot of rumors about executions, but that's just people's talk,” he said. “We will have no reprisals.
“We will have justice for all, but first we have to form a government so we can have proper courts,” he said.
In a statement last week, Ahmad al Sharaa, the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al Sham faction, said the government planned to publish a list of the former government's most wanted members and offer rewards for information leading to their arrest.
“We will pursue them in Syria and we call on countries to extradite those who fled so that we can achieve justice. … The blood of innocent martyrs and the rights of those imprisoned are a trust that we will not allow to be wasted or forgotten.”
At the same time, Al Sharaa said, the new leadership is offering conscripts an amnesty and will open so-called reconciliation centers.
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When rebels overran parts of Tadamon at the start of the civil war, the district became a symbol of resistance. When evidence of mass killings emerged, it seemed to reflect the sadism of Assad's security forces. In the days since the fall of the government, Tadamon has illustrated the search for the missing and for answers.
Last week in Tadamon, where bombed-out remains of buildings rise from a sea of rubble, Usama Kastana, 40, and several other residents explored for the first time the ruins near the Al-Ras checkpoint, including the site of the 2013 massacre that has plagued residents for years was forbidden.
“You couldn’t even get close to that block,” Kastana said. “We weren’t allowed.”
Two years ago, a member of the government-backed militia gave researchers 27 videos of intelligence and militia officers leading blindfolded detainees to a ditch filled with tires, pushing them into them as they ran, or shooting them in the back, then putting the tires in The bodies set fire.
Researchers and journalists combed through the videos and identified 288 people – including seven women and 12 children – who were killed.
There are bones on the floor in the Tadamon,
Fouad Shawakh, 56, said executions were common in the neighborhood until government troops withdrew this month.
“You heard gunshots,” he said. “Then there would be this smell of burning flesh everywhere.”
Mohammad Darwish, 23, pointed to a pile of trash and tattered clothing in the rubble, along with what appeared to be human bones.
“Look, here is the top part of the skull,” Kastana said.
“Search any of these buildings and you will find bones in every single one,” Darwish said, before leading a reporter to a nearby mosque that had been seized by Al-Ras' men during the war.
“We spent the last day getting bones out there too,” he said.
During his search, Darwish had discovered a tunnel. It stretched for several dozen feet but was partially blocked by debris. Darwish was sure there would be remains inside.
Although they would have been happy if Al-Ras had been punished, many here insisted that their priority was to learn the fate of their missing loved ones.
Men gather around a hole leading to a tunnel in Tadamon.
“The worst thing the authorities could do now would be to execute him,” said Walid Al-Abdullah, 56. “We know he committed the crime and that he should be punished, but they have to let him live, “Until we find out what happened.”
Al-Abdullah, an engineer, remembers July 27, 2013, when 15 members of his family, including his parents, sisters and four of his nieces and nephews, disappeared. He said he found the family home ransacked and found no trace of his loved ones.
“I'm not interested in getting compensation or for anything that was lost in the house. None of that,” he said. “I just want to know the fate of 15 people.”
Al-Abdullah said he had been sending official requests for information to the Interior Ministry and intelligence services for years. He got no answers, only punishments, he said, including the loss of some benefits at his state job.
He held out hope that his family was still alive – until he saw the videos of the massacre two years ago – and believed there were children among those abducted, so they would surely be okay.
After visiting Tadamon, Human Rights Watch released a report on Monday calling on Syrian transitional authorities to secure and preserve physical evidence of “serious international crimes committed by members of the former government” across the country.
Remains were found in what appeared to be mass graves outside Damascus.
(Ayman Oghanna / For The Times)
“The families of the people who were so brutally killed here deserve to know what happened to them,” said Hiba Zayadin, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The victims deserve responsibility.”
Al-Abdullah was waiting for a government to be formed so he could resume his search missions. He wants to know what happened to them, even though he may never understand why.
“Why would they kill children?” he asked.
Standing next to him was Ali Fadhel, who said he had been detained for more than three months after inquiring about his two brothers who had been kidnapped by the militia.
“There was no why or why not with them,” he said. “They just took you away.”