Syria's Interior Ministry on Friday announced the arrest of the main suspect in the 2013 Tadamon massacre, sparking celebrations in the streets of the south Damascus neighbourhood where 288 people were killed.
It was one of the worst acts of violence attributed to the former government of Bashar Al Assad, who fled to Moscow in December 2024 as rebel forces entered the capital, ending a bloody civil war that began in 2011.
The ministry released footage of the arrest of Amjad Yousef, a former member of military intelligence under Mr Al Assad, in the Al Ghab Plain area of Hama province in western Syria, near his hometown. Mr Youssef, 40, had been hiding there since the overthrow of the Assad regime, a security source told Reuters.
The US special envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, welcomed the arrest in a post on X, calling it an important step towards accountability for atrocities committed during the civil war. Syrian state media described him as "one of the most prominent direct perpetrators" of the massacre that took place on April 16, 2013.
Mr Yousef was thrust into the spotlight in April 2022 when The Guardian newspaper published videos provided by two academics that they said showed him forcing blindfolded civilians to run towards a pit in the Tadamon neighbourhood before shooting them.
One of the academics, Annsar Shahoud, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam Holocaust and Genocide Centre, spent four years documenting the massacre.
Posing as an online fangirl, Ms Shahoud gained Mr Yousef's trust and ultimately obtained his confessions both on video and audio recording.
After the fall of the Assad regime, civilians, media outlets and international organisations went to the site of the massacre to inspect it and interview witnesses. Locals refer to the site as "Amjad Yousef's Pit".
Ahmed Adra, a Tadamon resident and a member of the neighbourhood committee, said victims' families had been celebrating in the streets since morning. "We will take white roses and plant them at the site of the massacre and tell the victims that their memory is alive and that justice is being served," he told Reuters.
Ms Shahoud said she now felt safe with Mr Yousef in custody, but added the path to justice in Syria was unclear and did not include all perpetrators. "I feel safe now, despite the distance, because I always felt for years that this person was after me," she said.
