An international war crimes prosecutor said on Tuesday (Dec 17) that evidence emerging from mass grave sites in Syria has exposed a state-run "machinery of death" under toppled leader Bashar al-Assad in which he estimated more than 100,000 people were tortured and murdered since 2013.
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00:00An international war crimes prosecutor says evidence emerging from mass grave sites in
00:07Syria is exposing a state-run machinery of death under toppled leader Bashar al-Assad.
00:14Stephen Rapp visited two mass grave sites in the country.
00:18This one is in Najah, near Damascus.
00:20Rapp said he estimates more than 100,000 people were tortured and murdered since 2013.
00:29We heard from a witness who testified in Germany, and whom I personally interviewed
00:34and we personally worked with for a long period of time with satellite imagery, that at this
00:39particular cemetery where he had been one of the administrators, he was called into
00:43service by the government in 2012 in order to begin the mass burial of persons that had
00:51been killed in government custody.
00:53A cemetery guard and a farmer who lives nearby both described seeing refrigerated trucks
00:58at the site.
00:59The guard said there were large pits for bodies, as well as graves that would hold about half
01:04a dozen people.
01:10The other site visited by Rapp is in Kutaifa, where people declined to speak on camera or
01:15use their names for fear of retribution, saying they were not sure the area was safe yet after
01:20Assad's fall.
01:22One called it a, quote, place of horrors.
01:25The head of U.S.-based Syrian advocacy organization, the Syrian Emergency Task Force, has estimated
01:31at least 100,000 bodies were buried in Kutaifa alone.