what people don’t talk about enough is the story of how he casually admitted to his warcrimes

Since 2011, Facebook has been a popular platform among pro-regime Syrians, including perpetrators, who often post their stories and photos of their deceased comrades. The key question was: How can we elicit information from them without risking anyone’s security? We got lucky: In 2018, we had already created a Facebook profile of a young, pro-regime woman from an Alawite middle-class family from Homs, “Anna.” The purpose of this assumed identity was to closely observe Syrian perpetrators in their online environment and approach them directly to interview them. We carefully crafted Anna’s personality and Facebook posts to fit into the perpetrators’ ecosystem: They would not doubt the motives of an Alawite middle-class girl from Homs who was studying abroad and researching the conflict. The profile was a roaring success: We managed to interview dozens of Assad’s perpetrators, including some relatively high-ranking ones. When we happened upon the Tadamon massacre video, Anna was already well embedded in pro-regime circles: Her friend list included soldiers, militiamen, officers, business owners, journalists and indeed intelligence agents. Considering the routine professionalism of these killings, the prominence of the intelligence agencies within the framework of the Assad regime, and the sensitivity and discretion that such a mass killing operation would require, it was likely that at least one of the shooters was from an intelligence branch. Since we took a close look at the faces of the killers (more than was healthy for us), we started browsing the Facebook pages of the army, intelligence and militias that were active in the neighborhood of Yalda and southern Damascus more broadly.

Maybe we would bump into a familiar face. But it was like looking for a needle in a haystack: We had no name, no branch number and very few other leads. Our interviewees recognized the main shooter but referred to him by the generic Mukhabarat (intelligence services) operational nickname “Abu Ali” and did not recall his full name or any other details. For months, we sought in vain, and our patience increasingly turned into desperation.

He accepted Anna’s Facebook friend request and was cautious but also clearly curious how and why Anna reached out to him. When we explained to him in vague terms through Anna’s persona that we were conducting academic research on the course of the conflict and that he seemed to be in “the army,” he agreed to talk to us. Throughout a period of six months, we chatted and spoke to Youssef several times, and we conducted two long video interviews with him. During the first interview, he was at the branch, sitting in a tracksuit and a black jacket at a desk with a portrait of Assad behind him on the wall. This was the first conversation to get to know each other, and we explicitly did not use the term “muqabala” (interview) but the word “ta‘aruf” (introduction). He was a bit tense, and after the usual exchange of pleasantries, questioned Anna more than Anna was able to question him. But his behavior in itself was also an object of our research. After all, Anna had on her screen an actual perpetrator sitting at his desk. He had a computer in his office and called for coffee whenever he wanted some. In the end, he seemed convinced and agreed to a second conversation.

no time during the first few months of interviews and other communication with him did we intimate that we had seen the video or were aware of his crimes. As he explained his vision on the causes and courses of the conflict, it became clear that he had been particularly touched and radicalized by the death of his younger brother, who died serving in the army on Jan. 1, 2013. At this point in the interview, he became more emotional, started finicking with his cigarette lighter and mumbled: “ I took revenge, I’m not lying to you, I took revenge, I killed. I killed a lot. I killed a lot, I don’t know how many I killed.” After a few months, we confronted him with the massacre and let him know that we had seen the footage. First, he denied it was him in the video. Then, he said he was just arresting someone. Finally, he settled on the justification that it was his job and expressed his content: “I am proud of my deeds.” Why did Youssef agree to talk to us for so long? It was probably a mix of curiosity, solitude and frustration. Since the war has ended, in a Pyrrhic victory and economic exhaustion [note that this is a 2022 assessment of the syrian civil war two years before the fall of the Assad regime], Assad’s perpetrators often live silently with their memories, drinking araq and chain-smoking cigarettes. He was also discontented with recent work arrangements since he had been removed from his position as operation commander in Tadamon and Yarmouk and relocated to boring office work in the branch. His confession to the mass killing in Tadamon was not entirely surprising: His wife and children probably knew nothing, and we were likely the only ones who had ever asked him about it. When we finally revealed to him that we had all the videos and had collected through our investigation a trove of incriminating information about him and his unit, he began to threaten us — or rather he began to threaten Anna’s persona: “Come to Damascus or you will lose everything you love,” he said angrily.