Published : 03-06-2022
DW news site conducted an interview with the family of Waseem Siyam, the victim of the Tadamun massacre perpetrated by pro-regime militias in 2013.
In late April 2022, a Syrian defector leaked the video of the Tadamun massacre. Hundreds of Syrian families watched the clip, hoping to learn what had happened to their missing sons.
Waseem left his home in Damascus in the early morning of April 14, 2013. He had been ordered by the government to deliver flour to a state-run bakery in the city's southern Tadamon neighborhood. The 34-year-old never returned from what should have been a routine task.
For many years, the Siyams, who now live in Germany, believed Waseem had been arrested at a checkpoint and taken to a government jail. Yet the leaked video finally revealed to them the grisly details of his disappearance.
The clip shows a blindfolded man in a white t-shirt and jeans being led through an empty alley to a pit filled with corpses.
"My father was the first to recognize him [in the video]," says Tasnim Siyam, Waseem's sister, adding that her father recognized his son by his gait. "He looked so different, they had beaten him already, maybe it was also the fear."
They made Waseem jump into the pit and shot him dead.
"It is surreal, how can I process the fact the man being killed in the video is my brother," asks Tasnim Siyam.
The leaked video was recorded on April 16, 2013, just days after Waseem's disappearance. It shows two uniformed men methodically kill 41 people. Each time, one of the two gets a blindfolded person from a white delivery van, leads the person to a large pit that already contains several corpses and car tires. They are pushed in and shot dead. Then, the bodies are doused in fuel and set alight.
Ugur Umit Ungor, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at the University of Amsterdam, was among the first to receive a copy of the clip in 2019. Working with his colleague Annsar Shahhoud, the two were able to identify the two killers in the video: Najib al-Halabi, who is now dead, was part of a militia loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad; the other man, seen wearing a fishing hat, is Amjad Youssef. He is an officer in Assad's secret service.
Last week, The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) revealed in its latest report that the Syrian regime is currently holding the criminal Amjad Yousef, who killed dozens of Syrians in addition to raping dozens of women, in al Tadamun neighborhood in Damascus.
AGPS identified three Palestinian victims of the massacre: Wasim Omar Seyam, Sa’id Ahmad Khatab, and Abd Luay AlKubra, residents of Yarmouk Camp, south of Damascus.
DW news site conducted an interview with the family of Waseem Siyam, the victim of the Tadamun massacre perpetrated by pro-regime militias in 2013.
In late April 2022, a Syrian defector leaked the video of the Tadamun massacre. Hundreds of Syrian families watched the clip, hoping to learn what had happened to their missing sons.
Waseem left his home in Damascus in the early morning of April 14, 2013. He had been ordered by the government to deliver flour to a state-run bakery in the city's southern Tadamon neighborhood. The 34-year-old never returned from what should have been a routine task.
For many years, the Siyams, who now live in Germany, believed Waseem had been arrested at a checkpoint and taken to a government jail. Yet the leaked video finally revealed to them the grisly details of his disappearance.
The clip shows a blindfolded man in a white t-shirt and jeans being led through an empty alley to a pit filled with corpses.
"My father was the first to recognize him [in the video]," says Tasnim Siyam, Waseem's sister, adding that her father recognized his son by his gait. "He looked so different, they had beaten him already, maybe it was also the fear."
They made Waseem jump into the pit and shot him dead.
"It is surreal, how can I process the fact the man being killed in the video is my brother," asks Tasnim Siyam.
The leaked video was recorded on April 16, 2013, just days after Waseem's disappearance. It shows two uniformed men methodically kill 41 people. Each time, one of the two gets a blindfolded person from a white delivery van, leads the person to a large pit that already contains several corpses and car tires. They are pushed in and shot dead. Then, the bodies are doused in fuel and set alight.
Ugur Umit Ungor, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at the University of Amsterdam, was among the first to receive a copy of the clip in 2019. Working with his colleague Annsar Shahhoud, the two were able to identify the two killers in the video: Najib al-Halabi, who is now dead, was part of a militia loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad; the other man, seen wearing a fishing hat, is Amjad Youssef. He is an officer in Assad's secret service.
Last week, The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) revealed in its latest report that the Syrian regime is currently holding the criminal Amjad Yousef, who killed dozens of Syrians in addition to raping dozens of women, in al Tadamun neighborhood in Damascus.
AGPS identified three Palestinian victims of the massacre: Wasim Omar Seyam, Sa’id Ahmad Khatab, and Abd Luay AlKubra, residents of Yarmouk Camp, south of Damascus.
