‘Assad knew everything’: Syrian gravedigger reveals horrors in first-ever unmasked interview (2025)

A Syrian gravedigger whose testimony helped secure the conviction of two Assad officials in the first international trial on Syrian state torture has spoken exclusively to Middle East Eye after revealing his identity.

Muhammad Afif Nafieh was forced to dig mass graves for authorities under Bashar al-Assad from 2011 until early 2018 when he fled with his family to Germany.

He testified against Syrian officials convicted of crimes against humanity in a German court in Koblenz, and has also shared his experiences with the US Congress, on the sidelines of the United National General Assembly, and at the British Foreign Office.

Speaking to MEE last week, Nafieh described a relentless seven-day working week in which he oversaw the burial of an increasing stream of bodies.

It would last seven years. The bodies were frequently delivered in 16-metre refrigerator trucks, which could carry up to 400 corpses at a time, and showed signs of torture.

“All the tools and methods of torture were used on the executed,” he said.

“When I saw them, I’d imagine in my mind how much pain this person had endured to get to the point of execution, how much he died before he reached us. He died a hundred deaths before reaching that final one.”

Before the war in Syria, Nafieh was a Damascus governorate municipal worker. He was responsible for arranging burials, but said he never dealt with bodies in that capacity, nor had he seen a corpse before.

That changed one day in 2011 when intelligence officers arrived at his office and put him in charge of recording the burial of bodies that would start arriving.

Nafieh suspects he was chosen because he had always been committed to his job.

“I never took time off. I was never late… even on my days off, I’d come in,” he said.

'No' was forbidden

“I couldn’t say no in such an oppressive regime. The word ‘no’ was forbidden. Saying you are tired? Forbidden. Saying you are sick? Forbidden. Saying anything of the sort was completely banned. It was a totalitarian regime.”

He said he couldn’t believe what he was seeing the first time the refrigerator trucks arrived at Najha, the first mass grave location where he worked.

“I was shocked. Why are they entering the cemetery?” he said.

“They opened the refrigerator truck and that was the catastrophe, one my mind couldn’t comprehend. The sheer number of bodies. More than 300 or 400 corpses.”

Nafieh’s job was to document the burial of the bodies, including noting which security branch they had come from and how many were put into the ground.

Four copies were made of each report he did, with one copy sent to the presidential palace, the official residence of the then president Bashar al-Assad.

“Bashar al-Assad knew everything that was going on in the branches,” Nafieh said.

Once Najha was filled up, Nafieh said he was taken by two intelligence officers to an arid piece of land in Qutayfah, another location on the outskirts of Damascus, and asked if he thought it would make a good cemetery.

It was further away from residential areas than Najha, away from prying eyes, and Nafieh said he was directed by one of the officers to bring his team from Najha to Qutayfah.

“In Qutayfahwe would get one or two refrigeration trucks a week. Then it became two trucks, twice a week. We’d get four trucks,” he said.

Bodies were also coming from Sednaya prison, where he said people were executed at midnight and then buried at 3am, and from various hospitals in the Damascus area.

He said he was allowed to go home once a month to see his wife and children and that he was significantly impacted by the work, losing a lot of weight and crying by himself.

“I couldn’t sleep at night. I would scream. I would feel like the people I buried were watching me,” he said.

Eventually, Nafieh said he started to plan his way out. He said he told intelligence officers he was ill.

He said he paid off one officer so that he could be relieved of his work and paid again in 2018 before he flew out of Syria for good.

“I wanted to finish this,” he said. Nafieh resettled with his wife and three children in Germany where he testified in a national court in Koblenz in 2018 in the first ever international trial on Syrian state torture which resulted in the conviction of two Syrian officials.

“I vowed that the oppression in Syria would not go unanswered,” he said.

Fall of Assad

As well as testifying inKoblenz, Nafieh has worked with the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a US-based advocacy organisation established in 2011 which campaigns for a democratic transition and justice and accoutability in Syria.

Nafieh’s testimony, along with others including that of ‘Caesar’, a former Syrian forensic officer who smuggled tens of thousands of photos of bodies showing evidence of torture, helped bring about the economic sanctions imposed by the US on Syria in 2019.

In April 2023 he addressed the US Congress'sHouse Committee on Foreign Affairs where he urged lawmakers tohelp pressure regional Arab countries from normalising with the Assad government.

Now he’s calling for international sanctions on Syria tobelifted.

"I want to demand from the American government to lift the sanctions on Syria. Because Syria is a country whose regime has fallen," he said.

"I want to demand from the United States in my name, in the name of the free S,yrians and in the name of everyone who gave testimony for humanity, to lift the sanctions. Syria doesntneedthis."

Nafieh has previously kept his identity hidden for his and his family’s safety. But following the fall of Assad in December, he said he was now ready to go public.

“Before the fall of the regime, I never showed my face because even without revealing my identity or showing my face, my in-laws were arrested, their wives were arrested, and my sisters were arrested.

“So now, after the fall of the regime, it was a great joy. I wanted to reveal my identity.”