Searching for the Missing in Post-Assad Syria

SJAC's documentation efforts have been suspended by the U.S. foreign aid freeze. This report was completed prior to the freeze. More information is available  here. 

Arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance were defining features of the Syrian conflict, and the search for missing loved ones has long been a chief priority for Syrians. The sudden fall of the Assad government has raised hopes that families might finally be able to uncover the fate of the over 100,000 Syrians estimated to have disappeared into detention facilities and mass graves during the conflict. This investigation by SJAC and the  Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Sednaya Prison (ADMSP)  into detention at Mezzeh Military Airport provides in depth information on how the facility operated, the crimes committed there, and the final resting places of the detainees who died in custody or were executed at the facility. It also serves as a case study for the type of investigative work that will need to be undertaken on a wide scale in Syria in order to begin to identify the fates and whereabouts of those still missing.

• The Mezzeh Military Airport became integral to the system of enforced disappearance that the Assad government expanded after 2011, with over 28,000 men, women, and children likely held at the airport during the conflict.

• Detainee deaths were a regular occurrence at Mezzeh, with at least 1,000 detainees reportedly dying from torture and poor living conditions in custody and hundreds if not thousands more likely dying in executions at the airport.

• At least seven gravesites were likely connected to the Mezzeh Military Airport, with SJAC having identified the specific time periods in which three were likely used to bury detainees at Mezzeh.

After the fall of the Assad government, SJAC gained access to previously unavailable documents and data at Mezzeh, as well as other facilities administered by the Air Force Intelligence and Assad government entities involved in the transportation of detainees and human remains. This data provides new potential for identifying patterns of disappearance. Images of a number of these documents can be found in the appendix of this report or by  clicking here .

In the first few days after the fall of the Bashar al-Assad government, the focus of many Syrians was—perhaps surprisingly to some outside commentators—not on the personal fate of Assad or the shape of the transitional government. Instead, they raced to one or another of the infamous prisons into which the Assad government had disappeared tens of thousands of Syrians since 2011 and subjected them to systematic abuse, torture, and death. When only a fraction of the estimated detainee population was released and the hope of immediately reuniting with their missing loved ones began to fade, the attention of many Syrians quickly turned to the mass graves that civil society and human rights organizations had documented across the country in prior years. Many believe that these graves contain the bodies of missing detainees who died in custody or were executed after pro forma trials. Hence, amid the euphoria of the fall of the Assad government, the pain of families of detainees and the disappeared in Syria endures—and, hence, so too does the pursuit of truth and justice for the missing.

The identification of the unnamed thousands disappeared into Assad’s graves will necessitate a comprehensive missing persons program. This program should include extensive documentation and collaboration with families of the missing, in-depth investigations into the workings of the government’s detention system, and expert-led exhumations and forensic analysis of remains culminating in DNA identifications and the return of remains to families. For the past five years, the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC) has been developing such a process in Northeast Syria, working with the Raqqa-based  Syrian Missing Persons and Forensic Team (SMFT)  to investigate the fate and whereabouts of the approximately 10,000 Syrians who went missing in formerly ISIS-held territory. To increase the chances of successful identification of human remains, SJAC developed an investigative methodology, largely adapted from techniques used by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, to build hypotheses about the fates of individual disappeared persons. To do this, the team conducted in-depth contextual investigations into detention sites and graves, learning which detainees were likely taken to which prisons, and where detainees killed at those sites were likely buried. ^[1]  In this way, the team can build hypotheses about the identity of remains at particular graves, pursuing more targeted DNA testing and increasing the likelihood of successful identifications.

In early 2024, SJAC partnered with the Association for the Detained and Missing Persons in Sednaya Prison (ADMSP), to apply this investigative methodology in areas under the control of the Assad government for the first time. This report represents the culmination of SJAC’s and ADMSP’s efforts to document one detention facility in particular: the Mezzeh Military Airport, where the Air Force Intelligence (AFI) detained tens of thousands of Syrians after 2011. The results establish that existing investigative methodologies are relevant, and, with sufficient resources and time, the identification of Assad’s victims may be in reach.

When this investigation began, prisoners were still being held at the prison facilities at the airport on the southwest outskirts of Damascus, among the largest sites of detention during the Syrian conflict (see Figure 1). As the investigation was completed at the end of the year and the Assad government began to collapse, only several hundred of the thousands of detainees believed to have been detained at the site were released. As such, SJAC and ADMSP’s investigation is now more relevant than ever, as the search for those yet to be found begins in earnest.  ^[2]   This report relies on survivor testimony, including from insider witnesses, as well as AFI documentation recovered by the SJAC team from the Mezzeh facility in the days after Assad’s fall and verified AFI data that was leaked online.

Through the collection and analysis of this documentation SJAC and ADSMP were able to confirm the use of Mezzeh as a mass detention facility where detainees were arbitrarily held in extreme conditions, frequently subject to torture, and in many cases killed during their detention. The documentation identifies the personnel of the Air Force Intelligence Directorate (AFI) as the main perpetrators of mass detention, torture, and death of detainees in the airport, but also notes that other Syrian government and military branches maintained their own detention facilities in the airport. Investigators have also identified the direct connection between four mass graves in the Damascus area and the disposal of the bodies of detainees who died or were killed at Mezzeh.

The report unfolds across three sections following a short description of its methodology. First, it situates the development of the Mezzeh complex in the broader structure of the AFI. It discusses the profile of detainees held at Mezzeh after 2011 and patterns in their initial arrest and transfer. In the second section, the report uncovers the various detention facilities that existed within the airport complex and describes the treatment of detainees and the judicial proceedings to which they were subject. Finally, the report examines the circumstances surrounding detainee deaths at the site. The report concludes by discussing prospects for further work on Mezzeh and offering recommendations to Syrian authorities to support forensic investigations in the search for the missing. An appendix includes samples of some of the AFI documents and files used in this report.

This report is based primarily on several forms of documentation that each shed light on different aspects of detention and disappearances at the Mezzeh Military Airport.  At the heart of the report are in-depth qualitative interviews that ADMSP conducted with four former members of the Air Force Intelligence, including those who worked in the most sensitive offices at Mezzeh and possess knowledge of detainee deaths and disposal of bodies at gravesites. SJAC’s similarly in-depth interviews with 44 survivors of detention at Mezzeh provide details on the treatment of detainees, while broad patterns of detention at Mezzeh are derived from ADMSP’s survey-style interviews with 112 survivors detained at the airport after 2011 and 186 families who believe their missing loved ones were held there. This report also relies on open-source documentation, including courtroom testimony that SJAC recorded while monitoring trials against Assad government officials as well as satellite imagery of mass graves that were likely used to bury the bodies of detainees who died at Mezzeh. ^[3]   

This report was being finalized as the Assad government collapsed and the Mezzeh Military Airport and many other intelligence branches became accessible for documentation. Since 8 December 2024, having gained exclusive access to the most sensitive areas of the airport, SJAC has copied over 15,000 documents including detainee lists, arrest orders, and field court transfers from the period between 2011 and 2020. It has also collected digital files allegedly taken from the Mezzeh facility and leaked online in the days after the fall of the Assad government. SJAC has verified the credibility of these leaked digital files, which primarily cover the period between 2011 and 2017. The information they contain aligns with the AFI print documents that SJAC’s field team has collected on the ground at Mezzeh, insider witness testimony that SJAC and ADMSP gathered over the course of the investigation, and open-source information collected independently. It should be noted that SJAC’s review of these documents and data is partial and preliminary; systematic and comprehensive analysis for the purpose of the search for the missing will take years. Moreover, additional material from the AFI and other intelligence and security agencies may require revision of some of the findings here. Nevertheless, the analysis so far confirms many of SJAC and ADMSP’s findings and suggests new directions for investigation into those detained and disappeared at Mezzeh.

The Mezzeh Military Airport had not always been a site of arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance on a mass scale. Unlike the infamous formal prisons like Sednaya and Tadmor, Mezzeh only became an integral part of the Assad government’s machinery of enforced disappearance after 2011. This is not to downplay the significance of the site to the Assad government’s intelligence and security apparatus: for years prior to 2011, Mezzeh had hosted personnel and materiel associated with the Syrian Air Defense Force, the Fourth Division of the Syrian Arab Army, and the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center (responsible for handling the biological and chemical weapons portfolio under the Assad government); many of these units would play a part in the security and military operations that the Assad government began to launch in the greater Damascus area from 2012 onward especially.

Most importantly, however, Mezzeh already served as the physical location of the AFI Special Missions and Investigation branches. These two offices had been important in the intelligence operations of the AFI, as discussed further below, and after 2011 they came to be critical to the expanding practice of detention and disappearance at Mezzeh. In the period under focus here, the Special Missions Branch was headed by Air Force Brigadier-Generals Ghassan Ismail and Hasan Abdo as well as Major-General Qahtan Khalil, with Brigadier-General Saqr Manun also exercising significant influence. Crucially, this branch housed the 739th Airborne Brigade that carried out targeted raids in the Damascus area and transferred detainees from regional AFI branches to Mezzeh. In the period under study, the Investigation Branch was headed by Brigadier-General Abdul Salam Mahmoud, although Brigadier-General Suheil al-Zamam also exercised an important role in the administration of the branch’s detention facilities at Mezzeh. ^[4]  Regional AFI branches maintained local offices that corresponded to the two primary branches at Mezzeh (e.g., the regional and central Patrols Office), but they also undertook their own investigation and surveillance operations. 

The earliest cases of detention at Mezzeh that SJAC and ADMSP have documented date to mid-2011. On 6 June 2011, Investigation Branch head Abdul Salam Mahmoud requested approval from the General Prosecutor for Rural Damascus governorate to arrest and interrogate 19 individuals who allegedly participated in anti-government protests (see Appendix A). In the subsequent months and years, the detainee population in Syria skyrocketed and formal prison facilities quickly reached capacity. As we will see, the AFI played a prominent role in the early campaign of arrests and abductions, and in this context the Special Missions and Investigation branches increasingly became units responsible for the long-term detention of civilians and military personnel on a mass scale. By 2020, the two offices had converted over a dozen hangars, dormitories, and offices at Mezzeh into detention facilities (see Figure 2).

AFI documents and files indicate the overall scale of detention at Mezzeh and how it fluctuated over the period of the Syrian conflict. Between 2011 and early 2017, at least 28,809 detainees passed through Mezzeh. Around 5,000 detainees arrived every year during this period, with Figure 3 showing the peaks of detention in 2013 and 2016 (when the AFI was involved in arrests and abductions during the events of Darayya and Aleppo, respectively). ^[5]  In the subsequent few years, the rate of detention appears to have declined. Records from the Special Missions Branch, which brought detainees to Mezzeh, suggest that there were about 1,800 being taken to the airport in 2018. ^[6]  At any given time during the period of the Syrian conflict, Mezzeh Military Airport appears to have held between around 1,500 and 2,000 detainees.

Before discussing the mechanics of detainee movement to Mezzeh, which was deeply shaped by the presence of the AFI at the airport, it is worth briefly describing how this entity functioned in the period of the Assad government. The AFI was one of four intelligence entities that the Assad government maintained. It originally grew out of the Syrian Air Force, meaning it occupied a position of special significance in the security apparatus of the Assad government due to the personal links of the Assad family to the Air Force. By the 1980s, however, it had become an independent entity engaging in the surveillance of civilian life and repression of political dissent. After the 2011 uprisings developed into an armed conflict, the AFI also began to engage in domestic military operations. In the period under study in this report, between 8,000 and 10,000 personnel staffed the AFI under the successive leaderships of Jamil Hassan, Ghassan Ismail, and Qahtan Khalil.  ^[7]    

As was the case with other intelligence agencies under the Assad government, the AFI operated through a combination of highly centralized, top-down decision-making and autonomy for local units. Hence, as we will see, many arrests seem to have occurred at the direct orders of the Director of the AFI Administration from its headquarters in the Qasaa neighborhood of Damascus. These orders were relayed by central AFI branches based at Mezzeh, like the Special Missions Branch, to subordinate AFI branches and offices that were organized geographically across the governorates.  ^[8]   On the other hand, regional AFI branch facilities and AFI detachments at Syrian airports also exercised influence independently in their localities, for example through the many checkpoints that they installed over the course of the conflict. They typically kept central AFI authorities in the Damascus area informed of local surveillance and arrest operations.  

Whatever the formal administrative structure of the AFI, however, the documentation of SJAC and ADMSP makes it clear that the Mezzeh Military Airport became the operational core of detention and disappearance by this agency after 2011. Regional and local AFI offices systematically transferred detainees to Mezzeh following their arrest or abduction, as the next section explains.

The Syrians whom the AFI arrested or seized before taking them to Mezzeh came from numerous geographic, social, and ethno-sectarian backgrounds. Previous independent documentation has found that both men and women, and even children, were taken to Mezzeh from places as far-flung as Aleppo and Qamishli.  ^[9]   Mezzeh held many defected military personnel, political dissidents, and media activists, with AFI documents and data frequently characterizing such individuals as “members of a terrorist organization.” The targeted arrests of these individuals by the Special Missions Branch almost always appeared to have occurred “on the verbal orders” of the AFI Director. As Appendix B demonstrates, the Special Missions Branch frequently arrested people en masse, often seizing as many as a half-dozen people at a time. On the other hand, former AFI personnel also observed that many civilians with little apparent connection to protests had been taken to the airport complex following what seemed to be random arrests at checkpoints. AFI documents and data confirm such observations, with many arrests described as the capture of people “belonging to a terrorist organization.”  

In the sample of survivors surveyed for this report, certain clear trends emerge and are evident from the charts in Figure 4. Among the sample population of 112 survivors, it was young Sunni Arab men from the greater Damascus area who were most frequently held at Mezzeh, following their arrest at a checkpoint, at work, or on the street. Although a more representative sample population is necessary to make conclusions about this trend, it does align with AFI documents and data, which indicate that the plurality of detainees at Mezzeh were from areas around Aleppo and Damascus. ^[10]  At the same time, AFI documents and data provide evidence that hundreds of women and children were also held at Mezzeh. An entire detention facility (the Investigation Branch “new building”) was dedicated to holding women, many of whom the AFI seems to have been reserving for use in negotiations with armed opposition groups. Over 150 were held at Mezzeh, with some as less than a year old and many transferred to social welfare initiatives affiliated with Asma al-Assad. ^[11]  

Hardly any of these individuals received a formal notification of their arrest or were informed of the reason for their seizure. The testimony of survivors with whom SJAC conducted qualitative, in-depth interviews echoes these findings. One survivor who had been arrested as a university student recalled that:

I was in my dorm room in the University City neighborhood of Aleppo when the resident advisor came and told me to go to the office of the university president because there was some problem with my room. When I left with the RA, I was taken to a car waiting nearby… I wasn’t the only one in the car; there were a number of other people who had been detained as well. They pulled a bag over my head so that I couldn’t see anything, and began to beat me with a rifle butt and hurl insults at me while in the car. When they dropped us off, I had no idea where I was or who had taken me. All I knew was that I was inside a building on an upper floor. They took our belongings and inspected us, before leaving us to wait.  ^[12]  

The AFI was, of course, not unique in undertaking such arbitrary and secretive arrests of Syrians. Depriving detainees and their families of knowledge about the arrest or seizure was a longstanding practice by the intelligence agencies under the Assad government. It underpinned the practice of enforced disappearance on a mass scale and also served to instill fear and repress dissent across the population.  ^[13]   

Insider witness testimony and AFI documents shed more light on how, once arrested, Syrians were then transferred to Mezzeh. According to former AFI personnel, at the beginning of the protest movement in 2011, following their arrest, detainees from the Damascus area were brought individually to Mezzeh in cars, vans, and buses. By 2012, however, with the increase in the number of Syrians being arrested, detainees were brought together in large groups.  ^[14]   For areas far from Damascus, detainees were flown to Mezzeh by helicopters and sometimes airplanes. AFI detachments located at or near other airports in Syria including the Hama Military Airport, Tabqa Military Airport, and the Deir ez-Zor Airport would collect detainees captured during raids in nearby cities and towns before transporting them together by air.  ^[15]   Detainees were usually only held for a short time at the first airport before being transferred to Mezzeh by the Special Missions Branch. A glance at one AFI document from Mezzeh demonstrates how this process occurred (see Appendix C). On 8 December 2012, following an order from AFI Director Jamil Hasan, an intelligence unit within the Third Division of the SAA seized a dissident who had been wanted for allegedly providing support to armed militants in the town of Hawsh ʿArab. The detainee was then turned over to the AFI detachment in nearby Nasiriyya, before being taken to Mezzeh by the Special Missions Branch on the same day.  

The AFI units based out of Mezzeh targeted certain geographic areas in particular. Darayya, for example, was a major target of numerous raids and attacks launched from the airport. Between 2012 and 2014 especially, AFI personnel at Mezzeh collaborated closely with the Fourth Division of the SAA in detaining protestors and civilians from Darayya during demonstrations, nighttime raids, and frequent arrest campaigns. Among the most notorious arrest waves was in August 2012, when hundreds of civilians were killed or disappeared into AFI facilities including the Mezzeh airport.  ^[16]   Following this massacre, the local dynamics of the conflict changed, with local opposition groups gaining control of Darayya and the Syrian military besieging the city until the surrender of local opposition groups in 2016. Nevertheless, due to its proximity to Darayya, Mezzeh and its AFI units remained crucial for attacks onto the city and other suburbs of Damascus. 

It should be noted that not all detainees initially held in regional AFI branches were transferred to Mezzeh. Many were released following interrogation, and some presumably died in custody at these local facilities. In the case of those detainees who were not explicitly targeted by the Special Missions Branch, it remains unclear what determined whether they stayed at local AFI facilities or were transferred to Mezzeh. The records of the Special Missions Branch indicate that such transfers often occurred because it turned out that the detainee, after initial questioning by a separate intelligence branch or security entity at a checkpoint, was previously wanted by the AFI (see Appendix D). Further study of AFI documents and data may shed light on possible patterns in this regard.

There were several stages of interrogation through which detainees passed after arriving at Mezzeh and as they were moved between different facilities at the airport. After bringing detainees to Mezzeh, personnel from the Special Missions Branch would hold them in one of its facilities for several days and undertake preliminary interrogation. The Special Missions Branch would then transfer detainees to the custody of the Investigation Branch, where officers would further interrogate detainees and hold them in group cells for a period of several weeks (see Figures 6 and 7). Following the completion of interrogation, some detainees may have been sent back to a facility run by the Special Missions Branch, but many appear to have remained in Investigation Branch facilities while awaiting transfer to either judicial proceedings or detention facilities run by other intelligence or security entities. Out-transfers to facilities like Branch 248 (Military Intelligence) or Branch 251 (State Security) did happen, but they were rare and typically requiring the approval of the AFI Director.  ^[17]   As we will see, however, “transfers” to judicial proceedings in the form of military field courts—including those housed at Mezzeh itself—was quite common.

Detention at Mezzeh was frequently a long-term affair. While almost half of the survivors surveyed for this report were released within a year, almost 20% were held for five years or more (see Figure 5). This finding aligns with AFI data, which indicate that not only were most detainees either transferred to a court or another prison or released altogether, but also that this typically occurred within one or two years of arriving at Mezzeh. ^[18] 

Time spent at Mezzeh was marked by terror, abuse, and deprivation. The cruel and inhumane conditions of detention facilities under the Assad government are well-documented, and the testimony of AFI survivors confirms that such conditions also characterized the Mezzeh Military Airport. Detainees were subjected to harsh living conditions and torture from AFI members during their time at Mezzeh regardless of the branch in the airport they were held in. Families of detainees were also not informed of the location of their relatives within the prison system and were refused the ability to visit them.  ^[19]   Detainees were held in both group cells well past capacity and solitary confinement cells with more than one person in them (see Figure 7). One former AFI personnel who was detained himself at Mezzeh recalled the overcrowded conditions of the group cells in July of 2011, when large groups of detainees were brought in together:  

When the guard would close the door, people would fall on top of each other from the suffocation and the noise. There was no ventilation, no vents, so you would find many old people crushed under the others, dying in our hands. Many people were carried dead in our hands and they died in our hands… I would see dead people in front of me, people lying on the bodies. Sometimes whole nights would pass before they came to remove them, and the smell would kill us. My sense of smell has been gone since my time at the prison. I don't recognize anything anymore.  ^[20]   

All survivors surveyed and interviewed for this report were physically tortured during their detention at Mezzeh. Torture was used in attempts to extract information from detainees during interrogation and for the general punishment of detainees.   Physical torture included beatings, electrocutions, and asphyxiation. In some cases, women relatives of the detainee would be brought in and stripped naked in front of them.  ^[21]  

A number of former detainees also reported that they were subject to psychological and sexual torture by AFI members. This included threats of execution and rape, threat of arresting family members, being forced to watch other detainees be tortured, sleep deprivation, and hitting of their genitals. The effects of poor living conditions and torture left detainees with physical and psychological scars. Out of 112 survivors surveyed for this report, 24 reported suffering bodily damage at various levels that impacts normal life post-detention and 27 reported lingering psychological damage. AFI data reveals how the torture and atrocious conditions led to hundreds of detainees being hospitalized as they suffered from both diseases like tuberculosis, cellulitis, and empyema as well as mental illnesses that AFI personnel glossed generically as “psychological breaks."  ^[22] 

Many detainees at the Mezzeh Military Airport remained, died, or were released without ever undergoing judicial proceedings or even being charged. Those who did, however, typically faced trial by either a counter-terrorism court or a military field court. They typically faced prosecution on charges revolving around membership in a terrorist organization

Survivor testimony and AFI data indicate that trials by a military field court was the most common form of judicial proceedings for detainees at Mezzeh. Preliminary analysis suggests that well over 5,000 detainees at Mezzeh - perhaps as much as 20-30% of the total detainee population at the airport during the conflict--went before a military field court. Others were sent to anti-terrorism courts, which were located outside the Mezzeh complex. Prior to 2013, the military field court proceedings also took place outside Mezzeh, with many detainees reportedly sent to Sednaya Prison for this purpose.

Between 2013 and 2014, the AFI converted a helicopter hangar on the southwest outskirts of Mezzeh into a space for field court sessions (see Figure 8).  ^[23]   The decision to open the field court was due partly to the increasing numbers of detainees and the difficulties of transporting them outside of Mezzeh. By late 2014, there were over 700 detainees waiting to be referred to the field court, and some had been arrested almost two years prior.  ^[24]   At this time, Sednaya could not accommodate any more detainees, so for this reason a field court began to operate at Mezzeh. The establishment of the field court at Mezzeh was undertaken primarily by then-AFI Director Jamil Hasan.  ^[25]   It is notable that AFI data indicate that detainees from other detention facilities, including Sednaya Prison, were sometimes taken to the military field court at Mezzeh. ^[26]  Insider witnesses claim that the Mezzeh field court suspended its sessions for a period of time in 2015, likely amid the offensive that rebel groups launched on the airport in August that year to break the siege of Darayya.  ^[27]   It is not clear after this suspension if field court trials continued at another location at the airport or ceased altogether at Mezzeh.  ^[28]  

According to witnesses, the field court at Mezzeh held trials twice a week.  ^[29]   These trials encompassed entities other than the AFI personnel at Mezzeh, such as the Military Prosecutor General, delegates from the Military Intelligence Division, and an officer from the AFI’s Southern Region Command based in Harasta. Field court sessions were understood to be harsher than judicial proceedings outside of Mezzeh because detainees were not allowed any legal representation.  ^[30]   

The field courts at Mezzeh handed the detainees a number of sentences, with the severity usually depending on whether detainees were able to pay off the court committees. The most common sentence given to detainees was a prison sentence of two or three years. The detainees who received this sentence mostly remained at Mezzeh until their release or, in rare cases, were transferred to other AFI-affiliated facilities. ^[31]   AFI data indicates that, between 2011 and early 2017, over 18,000 detainees were transferred from Mezzeh to other detention facilities and over 8,000 were released altogether. ^[32]  Other detainees were sentenced to life in prison and sent to Sednaya prison. In some instances, those sentenced to life in prison were able to transfer to the Adra civilian prison if they were able to pay a bribe. The most extreme verdicts by the field courts were death sentences, followed by execution at Mezzeh. There is ambiguity regarding how soon the executions took place after the sentencing of the detainee, with one witness recalling that sometimes those waiting for execution would be sent to AFI-specific wings in Sednaya or Adra prisons.  ^[33]  

At least a thousand detainees likely died at Mezzeh after 2011, and hundreds if not thousands more probably did so as well. These deaths occurred both “in custody,” i.e., as a result of torture and poor living conditions, and following the issuance of death sentences and the implementation of execution orders. The Caesar Photos alone suggest that 352 detainees held by the Air Force Intelligence—and very likely at Mezzeh itself—are believed to have died in custody between October 2011 and late 2013.  ^[34]   According to one batch of AFI data from Mezzeh, 532 detainees died in custody between March 2011 and August 2013, following short periods of detention at the airport (often just a few weeks). The terminology that AFI personnel used to refer to these cases—generically referred to as “death” (wafat/fats)—does appear distinct from terminology associated with deaths from execution, which is partly why SJAC has interpreted these numbers as referring to deaths in custody rather than executions following military field court sentences. At least 20% of these deaths reportedly occurred in one of the detention facilities run by the Special Missions Branch, although almost a hundred detainees also allegedly died “at hospital” – almost certainly one of the nearby military hospitals.  ^[35]   Other AFI data indicates that between 2012 and early 2017, at least 622 detainees died as a result of torture or poor living conditions at Mezzeh. ^[36]  Many of these reported deaths occurred within a few days of detainees’ arrival at Mezzeh and were clustered together, with several detainees reportedly dying on the same day; this may indicate torture rather than deteriorating health conditions was the primary cause of death at Mezzeh.

SJAC has not yet verified the deaths that AFI personnel recorded, but the data broadly aligns with witness testimony. According to one insider witness who was also held in detention at Mezzeh, deaths in custody may have been particularly frequent in summer months, when survivors witnessed high temperatures exacerbate the overcrowded conditions of facilities at Mezzeh and lead to the asphyxiation of many detainees.  ^[37]   The witness estimated that, in 2012, 30-35 detainees per month were dying as a result of torture and poor living conditions at the airport.   ^[38]   When averaged out over the course of the year, this estimate aligns with AFI data for deaths in custody during the period 2011-2016.

The scale of deaths following death sentences and executions is more difficult to determine. AFI insider witnesses claim that executions began to take place at the airport itself, after the establishment of the field court there between mid-2012 and early 2013. Executions occurred either weekly or biweekly, with as many as 15 to 40 people often executed together at a time in the same hangar that housed the field court.  ^[39]   Officers and soldiers accused of membership in the political opposition were executed by firing squad, while civilians were typically hanged.  ^[40]    

Whether detainees died in custody or in executions mattered for the methods of documentation and body disposal. For those who died in custody between 2011 and 2014, at least, AFI personnel would collect their bodies in the square next to the Special Missions Branch building.  ^[41]   Brigadier-General Muhammad Sulayman headed an AFI medical office at Mezzeh that systematically fabricated reports indicating that detainees died of cardiac arrests or respiratory failures–regardless of the true cause for their death; copies of some of these reports may lie with the Medical Services Administration, an entity which was independent of the AFI entirely, or at individual hospitals (see below).  ^[42]   By contrast, the process of documenting detainee deaths in executions was more secretive. The reports that the same AFI medical office produced under Muhammad Sulayman were retained by the military field court committee and the Special Missions Branch administration.  ^[43]   Publicly available AFI data does not contain information about specific field court sentences or execution orders. As a result, the documents that SJAC has consulted from the Special Missions Branch at Mezzeh may be particularly important for shedding light on the fate of the thousands who were sent to the field court. 

Detainees who were executed at Mezzeh were buried separately from those who died from torture or poor living conditions. This aligns with prior public testimony which suggested that the AFI disposed the bodies of victims of execution in a manner distinct from those who died in custody.  ^[44]   According to witnesses, bodies of those who were sentenced to death and then executed in the field court hangar were buried by bulldozers near the hangar during the early stages of the field courts inside Mezzeh. 

In 2013 and 2014, at least some of the bodies of those who died in custody rather than due to executions at Mezzeh would be taken to the nearby Military Hospital 601 (Mezzeh Military Hospital). At Military Hospital 601, they joined the bodies of detainees coming from a number of other detention facilities around the Damascus area. As prior independent documentation has revealed, at Military Hospital 601 personnel not necessarily from the AFI assigned numbers to bodies and bagged them for burial at one of the gravesites mentioned below. These numbers may have been the “examination numbers” that, according to prior independent documentation, were assigned by forensic doctors at multiple military hospitals.  ^[45]   It is not clear if these numbers corresponded to the individual’s number in detention. Some AFI documents that SJAC consulted, including a March 2013 memo from Special Missions Branch head Ghassan Ismail to AFI director Jamil Hasan, suggest that these numbers were distinct. According to the memo, a detainee who died in custody at Mezzeh was taken to Military Hospital 601, where the body was assigned a new number different from the detainee number (see Appendix E). Searching for this number in the records of other intelligence and security agencies of the Assad government–especially the receipts of the Military Police, which was responsible for handling the bodies of many detainees who died in detention–may shed light on the whereabouts of these remains.  

It is worth noting that in the aforementioned memo, Special Missions Branch head Ghassan Ismail claimed that the detainee in question had died “as a result of deteriorating medical conditions.” As is well-established, however, the Assad government systematically falsified medical reports such that detainees who almost certainly died in custody as a result of torture were said to have died from medical conditions. During one visit to the Military Hospital 601 in November 2013, an insider witness observed that bodies clearly bore marks of laceration and asphyxiation likely arising from torture.  ^[46]   In this context, it is worth noting that at least some of the bodies at Military Hospital 601 belonged to detainees who had reportedly been held at the Mezzeh military airport in the months prior to their death in custody. In some of these cases, about five months had elapsed between the initial arrest of the AFI detainees and the documentation of their deaths.  ^[47]   

Detainees executed at Mezzeh were disposed of through a different process. According to a former officer in the Military Police, the detachment of the Medical Services Administration at Mezzeh typically oversaw the burial of bodies arising from executions. However, after 2011 and with the increase in cases of mass executions, AFI personnel also began to participate in the burial of bodies and often did so without recourse to the Medical Services Administration whatsoever.  ^[48]    

It should be noted that in 2012 Mezzeh also received the bodies of those who were killed in raids and clashes in nearby areas such as Moadamiyet al-Sham and Darayya. Insider witnesses observed that AFI personnel either dumped the bodies of these detainees in public areas as a means of intimidating local residents or took them to be buried in mass graves outside the airport with no documentation of their identities (see below).  ^[49]   In one instance in mid-2012, an insider witness observed five cars full of bodies being brought to Mezzeh for burial outside of the airport.  ^[50]   AFI documentation from Mezzeh also suggests that the events surrounding Darayya were particularly important for detainee deaths at the airport: of the 532 cases of detainee deaths logged between March 2011 and August 2013, 20 allegedly occurred during the peak of the August 2012 raids on Darayaa.  ^[51]  

Through interviews with insider witnesses, SJAC and ADMSP have been able to identify seven sites where detainees who died at Mezzeh were likely buried (see Figure 9). However, most witness testimony thus far has focused on three of these sites, and so they are the focus of this section. They include gravesites in the area of Jdeidet al-Fadl, at the Conference Palace in the Najha area, and within the Mezzeh airport complex itself. The decision to send the bodies of detainees to one or another of these gravesites depended partly on the nature of detainee deaths and contingent factors on the ground like the physical security of transportation routes from Mezzeh. Preliminary satellite imagery analysis aligns with witness testimony.

The Jdeidet al-Fadl gravesite, located to the southwest of Mezzeh on the outskirts of the town of Jdeidet Artooz and close to the Syrian Army’s 10th Division base, was reportedly used to bury detainees who died in custody between at least mid-2011 and late 2013. According to one witness who worked in the Special Missions Branch and was also detained at Mezzeh at certain points between early 2011 and mid-2012, AFI personnel from Mezzeh undertook burial duties at this specific site, sometimes after processing the bodies at Military Hospital 601. The bodies of detainees were assigned numbers which were recorded by an AFI member in place of their identity and then buried together in the mass grave.  ^[52]   In this period, they would depart the airport with vehicles loaded with the bodies of detainees and the bodies of those killed during raids in nearby neighborhoods.  ^[53]   Although the Jdeidet al-Fadl gravesite may have been in use by the AFI as early as August 2011, it was particularly active in 2012 in the context of the raids in Darayya. For several months that year, another former AFI member at the time observed about 10-15 bodies transported by car to the gravesite. While many of these victims likely died in detention, others had already been killed prior to being brought to Mezzeh for transportation to Jdeidet al-Fadl.  ^[54]   It is not clear if and when the AFI ceased to use this site. On the one hand, a witness present in the area of Jdeidet al-Fadl witnessed digging at the sites and heard reports of the creation of a mass grave in April 2013.  ^[55]   This occurred in the context of the Jdeidet al-Fadl massacre in which nearby detachments of the Fourth Division of the SAA (also present at the Mezzeh complex) participated in the killing of hundreds of local residents. On the other hand, by 2013, the AFI was also reportedly using other sites to bury the bodies of detainees who died in custody at Mezzeh.

Upon visiting the area of Jdeidet al-Fadl in February 2025, SJAC and ADMSP documented the existence of what appear to be individual graves clustered in and around a cemetery that local residents claim to have established themselves to following the Jdeidet al-Fadl massacre in late 2013. These residents also reported that there are mass graves in the area - possibly in the perimeter of the 100th Artillery Division overlooking the cemetery - and SJAC intends to investigate these reports further to determine if they are the same gravesite that AFI witnesses referred to.

The second gravesite that SJAC and ADMSP have connected to the Mezzeh Military Airport was at the Conference Palace in the area of Najha on the southern outskirts of Damascus. This site also appears to have been used specifically for the burial of detainees who died in custody at Mezzeh—partly because there was an AFI detachment at this location. According to one witness who previously worked in the AFI, in 2013 and 2014 AFI units were often accompanying trucks to the Conference Palace while rarely entering the perimeter of the palace complex itself. On one occasion, however, this witness was able to enter the complex and personally saw trucks deposit bodies into holes that were located directly west of the Conference Palace structure and appeared to have been dug previously with heavy machinery. After the bodies were deposited into the holes, trucks covered up the grave. ^[56]  Satellite imagery shows that earth disturbances consistent with grave digging occurred at the site which the witness mentioned, first in late 2012 and then again in the latter half of 2013. (see Figures 11 and 12). According to another witness, the decision to take the bodies of detainees to gravesites in the Najha area, including the Conference Palace site, usually depended on the security of the route from military hospitals; if the route was unsafe due to clashes, bodies were taken to other locations in the Damascus area (such as the Jdeidet al-Fadl gravesite).  ^[57]   In a visit to the Conference Palace location in December 2024, ADMSP found that mass graves had allegedly been dug at other sites in the immediate vicinity. It remains unclear when these other alleged graves were dug and how much construction work at the Conference Palace since 2017 has disturbed these sites.

The third prospective gravesite that SJAC and ADMSP have documented is at the Mezzeh airport itself. According to multiple former members of the AFI, there are at least two mass graves that likely hold the bodies of detainees who died at the airport in 2013 and 2014. The first of these is located near the field court hangar on the southwest edge of the airport complex, where one former AFI personnel claims that trenches were dug with heavy machinery around the same time as the field court began to operate in 2013. The same witness believes that these trenches were active as a burial site in that year in particular, but were no longer in use by 2015 as a result of the same clashes that had shut down the use of the field court hangar.  ^[58]   Another former member of the AFI pointed to the same location as a site of a mass grave, although he does not know when it was dug.  ^[59]   A visit to the site by SJAC in December 2024 confirmed the presence of earthen mounds that appear to be trenches (see Figure 12). These may be the same mass grave to which public testimony about Mezzeh has previously referred.  ^[60]  

The second likely mass grave that SJAC has documented is located in a garden near the Investigation Branch building. According to an insider witness who worked at Mezzeh, at one point during the period of his work at the airport his superiors ordered him and a group of other AFI personnel to cut down about a third of the olive trees in this garden. They dug a number of trenches about 15m long and 2-3m wide before being put on paid leave for a week; after returning to work, they found the trenches covered.  ^[61]   Satellite imagery reveals disturbances to the earth at this location—in a manner consistent with grave digging—to have occurred between January and April 2014 (see Figure 13). When SJAC visited the Mezzeh Military Airport in December 2024, it documented six long earthen mounds at the Investigation Branch garden precisely in line with the witness’s testimony (see Figure 14).

The profile of detainees who were buried in the Mezzeh Military Airport gravesites remains unclear, although preliminary analysis suggests that they were victims of execution following death sentences in field court trials. After all, these gravesites were located close to the location of the field court and execution hangars, and as we have seen detainees who died in custody at Mezzeh were typically sent to a military hospital and then either Najha, Jdeidet al-Fadl, or other mass graves. Further witness interviews and analysis of AFI documents and data may shed light on this question.

This report is the culmination of an investigation that began before the Assad government fell and with little hope that its findings would be immediately applicable in the search for the missing. The original goal was to demonstrate how the search methodology that SJAC had developed in the post-ISIS context of Northeast Syria could hypothetically be applied in the context of enforced disappearance at the hands of the Assad government. This report has indeed shown how family-centered documentation efforts and in-depth investigations into particular detention facilities and gravesites can uncover the fate and whereabouts of the missing, as well as facilitate the kind of targeted DNA testing necessary to identify remains that will one day be exhumed from mass graves. In doing so, it has also shed light on one of the largest but least-studied detention facilities in Assad-era Syria.

However, the sudden change in the Syrian political landscape has made it possible to take immediate steps that can both act on the findings of this investigation and support a wider, comprehensive search for the detained and disappeared. In the coming months, SJAC will continue to document and preserve evidence from AFI detention facilities and gravesites it has identified in collaboration with ADMSP. In this context, it will conduct additional interviews with witnesses and survivors who can confirm preliminary findings and provide context on AFI documents and data. At the same time, SJAC has begun to systematically catalogue and analyze the documentation that it has collected from AFI facilities. The same approach can be adapted for other sites of enforced disappearance, such as Sednaya Prison or more local governorate-level prisons and detention facilities. The active involvement and trust of these families will be crucial to all such efforts, as it was in SJAC’s work documenting cases of disappearance in territories formerly held by ISIS.

In the coming months, there are measures that Syrian authorities especially can take to support forensic investigations into the fate of the missing— whether at Mezzeh Military Airport, other former detention facilities and gravesites in Syria—along the lines that SJAC and ADMSP have presented here.

• Secure detention facilities and related military and security branches. The physical documents at these sites will be key to future investigations and need to be preserved for analysis. The sites should also be protected from physical changes (such as painting walls) until they are thoroughly investigated. Some sites may contain evidence, such as the names of prisoners etched on walls.

• Preserve mass graves for future investigation by guarding sites that are publicly known and that are at risk of disturbance or tampering. The authorities should also provide clear communication to communities about the importance of preservation of gravesite evidence. The tampering or ad hoc exhumations of graves without appropriate preparation or forensic expertise will damage evidence and decrease the probability of future identification of remains.

• Meet with families of the missing and survivors of detention. If families do not have trust in the new government’s ability or willingness to search for their loved ones, an identification process will never succeed.

• Provide the UN IIMP with permission to travel freely, access facilities, and establish a permanent presence within the country. While ultimately the process must be Syrian-led, the new government will need extensive international resources, as well as specialized forensic expertise, to succeed, all of which the IIMP could take a role in securing.

• Continue to meet with relevant Syrian civil society organizations and families of the missing to discuss the formation of a missing persons processes.

• Appoint an official within the Ministry of Justice to act as the point person for missing persons efforts during the transition period. Before the advent of official investigations, such an official can begin building relationships with families to understand their needs and priorities, as well as various international and civil society organizations likely to be involved in future investigations. 

Appendix A: Redacted request from Investigation Branch head Abdul Salam Mahmoud to Rural Damascus General Prosecutor for approval to arrest 19 individuals for promoting anti-government demonstrations; letter dated 6 June 2011.

Appendix B: Redacted memo from Special Missions Branch head Ghassan Ismail to Investigation Branch head Abdul Salam Mahmoud, informing the latter of the arrest of five individuals on the pretext that they had participated in protests; memo dated 9 July 2011.

Appendix C: Redacted memo from Special Missions Branch head Ghassan Ismail confirming the arrest of an individual on the direct orders of AFI Director Jamil Hasan; memo dated 10 December 2012.

Appendix D: Memo from Special Missions Branch to Investigation Branch, notifying the latter of the transfer of three detainees, two of whom had initially been arrested at checkpoints before being found previously wanted by the AFI; memo dated 21 March 2018.

Appendix E: Memo from Special Missions Branch head Ghassan Ismail notifying the death in custody of a detainee whose arrest had been requested by AFI Director Jamil Hasan; memo dated 3 March 2013.

[1] Syria Justice and Accountability Centre, “Unearthing Hope: The Search for the Missing Victims of ISIS” (Washington, D.C.: Syria Justice and Accountability Centre, 2022); Syria Justice and Accountability Centre, “The ISIS Prison at Mansura Dam: Investigating the Fates of Detainees” (Washington, D.C.: Syria Justice and Accountability Centre, 2024).

[2] ADMSP, “ADMSP Conducts a Thorough Field Inspection of the Air Force Intelligence (AFI) Prisons in Damascus,” https://www.admsp.org/en/contact-us-2-2/.

[3] The testimony in question was delivered during the Anwar Raslan trial, which SJAC observed as part of its trial monitoring program. For summaries of witness testimony from this and other trials that SJAC has monitored, see  https://syriaaccountability.org/trial-monitoring/ . 

[4] ADMSP Interview with Witness IR, 30 September 2024; ADMSP Interview with Witness AH, 4 May 2024; ADMSP Interview with Witness HT, 7 May 2024. In November 2024, the US government sanctioned Abdul Salam Mahmoud; see https://www.state.gov/marking-one-year-since-icj-provisional-measures-against-syria-with-designation-of-syrian-official-due-to-involvement-in-gross-violations-of-human-rights/.

[5] SJAC reached these figures by combining the total figures of detainee lists in 10 sheets contained within the AFI file entitled “Sujun Faraʿ al-Tahqiq,” as well as the detainee list in the AFI file entitled “Wufiyat.” These lists were chosen because there does not appear to be repetition of names between them. In this context it is worth noting that the number does not include the names listed in the “Ikhla’ Sabil” sheet because it may contain the same names referenced in other sheets (doing so would have brought the total to 37,079).

[6] See Special Missions Branch detainee lists in AFI binder entitled “Mawqif al-Sijn 10/3/2018”

[7] ADMSP communication with witness IR, 24 October 2024.

[8] The regional AFI branches included Aleppo Branch, located in the New Aleppo area; the Southern Branch, which was located in Harasta and covered Suweyda, Daraa, Quneitra, and Damascus countryside governorates; the Middle Branch, which was located in Homs City and covered Homs and Hama governorates as well as the cities of Tartous and Lattakia; and the Eastern Branch, which was located in Deir Ezzor City and covered areas of Deir Ezzor, Raqqa, and Hasakeh governorates.  . 

[9] Amnesty International, “It Breaks the Human: Torture, Disease, and Death in Syria’s Prisons” (London: Amnesty International, 2016), 39, 50.

[10] AFI detainee lists contain information about both their places of birth and their permanent addresses at the time of arrest. More systematic qualitative analysis of this information is necessary.

[11] See the “al-Ihala” sheet in AFI file entitled “Sujun Farʿ al-Tahqiq.” On the SOS “children’s villages,” see “SOS Villages under Asma al-Assad's control are implicated in detainees' children's disappearance,” The New Arab, 6 January 2025,  https://www.newarab.com/video/asma-al-assads-sos-villages-linked-disappeared-children .

[12] SJAC Interview with Survivor AA, 10 October 2023.

[13] Documentation of enforced disappearance under the Assad government is vast. For one study, see Amnesty International, “It Breaks the Human.”

[14] ADMSP Interview with Witness IR, 4 October 2024.   

[15] ADMSP Interview with Witness JL, 23 July 2024; ADMSP Interview with Witness AJ, 12 August 2024.

[16] Syrian British Consortium, “A Decade after Daraya” (London: Syrian British Consortium, 2012), 23-24,  https://www.syrianbritish.org/_files/ugd/3f0228_a983dda5e33c4d929bfd7681cd0b3563.pdf .

[17] ADMSP Interview with Witness AH, 4 May 2024. See also the “Ihalat al-Afruʿ wa Taht al-Tasarruf” sheet in AFI entitled “Sujun Farʿ al-Tahqiq.”

[18] See the “al-Ihala” and “Ikhla’ Sabil” sheets within AFI file entitled “Sujun Farʿ al-Tahqiq”

[19] ADMSP Interview with Witness IR, 23 September 2024.

[20] ADMSP Interview with Witness AH, 4 May 2024.

[21] ADMSP Interview with Witness IR, 4 October 2024.

[22] See the “al-Mashfa” sheet in AFI file entitled “Sujun Farʿ al-Tahqiq.”

[23] ADMSP Interview with Witness IR, 30 September 2024.

[24] AFI document entitled “Asma’ Mawqufin qayd al-Ihala ila Mahkama Maydaniyya ʿAskriyya.”

[25] ADMSP Interview with Witness B0, 11 May 2024.

[26]See the “al-Ihala” sheet in AFI file entitled “Sujun Farʿ al-Tahqiq.” Most of these cases appear to date to March 2014.

[27] On the rebel offensive on Mezzeh, see Syria Direct, “News Update 8-6-15” (6 August 2015), https://syriadirect.org/syria-direct-news-update-8-6-15/.

[28] ADMSP Interview with Witness IR, 30 September 2024; ADMSP Interview with Witness IR, 21 October 2024.

[29] ADMSP Interview with Witness IR, 30 September 2024.

[30] ADMSP Interview with Witness B0, 11 May 2024.

[31] ADMSP Interview with Witness B0, 11 May 2024.

[32] Specifically,18,331 cases of transfer and 8,270 cases of release; see, respectively, the ”al-Ihala” and ”Ikhla’ Sabil” sheets of AFI file entitled ”Sujun Farʿ al-Tahqiq”; SJAC has not yet determined if the same names recur across these populations. .

[33] ADMSP Interview with Witness B0, 11 May 2024.

[34] According to Human Rights Watch, 352 of the bodies featured in the Caesar Photos bore a mark (the Arabic letter jim) clearly identifying that the detainees had been held by the AFI. See Human Rights Watch, “If the Dead Could Speak: Mass Deaths and Torture in Syria’s Detention Facilities” (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2015), 4, 33. Human Rights Watch implied that the mark was referring to a specific detention facility rather than the AFI as an administrative entity itself. Although it is possible that other AFI facilities like the Harasta branch could have been involved, witness testimony and AFI documents and data strongly suggest that these 352 bodies belonged to detainees at the Mezzeh Military Airport specifically.    

[35] AFI document entitled “La’ihat al-Wafiyat min Tarikh 2011/03/15 hatta 2013/08/31.”

[36] See the “al-Wafat,” “al-Mawaqif al-Muhalin,” and “al-Ihala” sheets in AFI file entitled “Sujun Farʿ al-Tahqiq.”

[37] Human Rights Watch, “If the Dead Could Speak,” 21..

[38] ADMSP Interview with Witness IR, 21 October 2024.

[39] ADMSP Interview with Witness B0, 11 May 2024.

[40] ADMSP Interview with Witness IR, 30 September 2024.

[41] ADMSP Interview with Witness AH, 4 May 2024.

[42] ADMSP Interview with Witness IR, 23 October 2024.

[43] ADMSP Interview with Witness B0, 11 May 2024.

[44] Syria Justice and Accountability Centre, “Trial of Anwar Raslan and Eyad al-Gharib: Trial Reports 1-58 April 23, 2020 – January 13, 2022” (Washington, D.C.: Syria Justice and Accountability Centre, 2023), 255.

[45] Human Rights Watch, “If the Dead Could Speak,” 7.

[46] ADMSP Interview with Witness IR, 21 October 2024.

[47] Human Rights Watch, “If the Dead Could Speak,” 42, 77.

[48] ADMSP Interview with Witness B0, 11 May 2024.

[49] ADMSP Interview with Witness AH, 4 May 2024.

[50] ADMSP Interview with Witness AH, 4 May 2024.

[51] AFI document entitled “La’ihat al-Wafiyat min Tarikh 2011/03/15 hatta 2013/08/31.”

[52] ADMSP Interview with Witness AH, 4 May 2024.

[53] ADMSP Interview with Witness AH, 4 May 2024; ADMSP Interview with Witness IR, 30 September 2024.

[54] ADMSP Interview with Witness HT, 7 May 2024.

[55] ADMSP Interview with Witness SO, 5 May 2024.

[56] ADMSP Interview with Witness IR, 21 October 2024.

[57] ADMSP Interview with Witness B0, 11 May 2024.

[58] ADMSP Interview with Witness IR, 30 September 2024; ADMSP Interview with Witness IR, 23 October 2024.

[59] SJAC communication with Witness WS, 19 December 2024.

[60] In the trial of Anwar Raslan and Eyad al-Gharib, Witness P14 reproduced a secondhand account of how the AFI personnel buried detainees “underneath the runway” at the airport; see Syria Justice and Accountability Centre, “Trial of Anwar Raslan,” 259.  

[61] SJAC communication with Witness AJ, 19 December 2024.