The Syrian government is planning to turn Mezzeh military airport into a private aviation facility [Getty]
Syrian authorities have begun measures to protect sites at Mezzeh Military Airport in western Damascus where suspected mass graves are located.
The move comes amid controversial plans to convert the currently closed military airport into a private aviation facility and commercially develop the site.
The plans were greeted with dismay by rights groups, who said the Assad regime had used the airport as an execution site and warned that suspected mass graves there should not be disturbed.
On Tuesday, Syria’s General Authority for Civil Aviation and Air Transport and its National Authority for Missing Persons conducted a joint field visit to the airport to inspect several locations that may contain mass graves.
In a statement, the General Authority for Civil Aviation and Air Transport said the visit led to the identification of several areas that will be excluded from any work involving excavation, levelling or changes to the soil.
The two Syrian government authorities also agreed on a protocol requiring work to be stopped immediately at any site where objects or other signs indicate the possible presence of a mass burial site.
The civil aviation authority said the airport’s rehabilitation would not come at the expense of protecting sensitive sites or potential evidence. It added that coordination with the National Authority for Missing Persons would continue throughout the rehabilitation process.
The measures are particularly significant because previous investigations have identified sites where detainees are believed to have been buried inside Mezzeh Military Airport.
In an investigation published in 2025, the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC) documented two locations inside the airport complex suspected of being mass graves containing people who died in Assad regime detention.
Using interviews with survivors and former personnel from the Assad regime’s notorious Air Force Intelligence, as well as documents and satellite imagery, the investigation found indications of burial operations at two locations inside the airport: one near an aircraft hangar and another in a garden near the building housing the investigation branch.
SJAC said more than 1,150 detainees died at the airport, some as a result of execution and others because of torture or mistreatment. However, this does not mean that the remains of all those who died are at the site, nor have the suspected locations been definitively confirmed as graves.
In July 2025, the centre sent the coordinates of the two locations to the National Authority for Missing Persons, calling for construction or excavation work there to be prevented until investigations were completed.
After the Syrian uprising against former dictator Bashar al-Assad’s rule broke out in 2011, the regime detained tens of thousands of suspected activists and dissidents. Many were forcibly disappeared, with no information about their fate.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has previously said that more than 177,000 people were missing in Syria, most of them likely dead.
After the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, relatives of detainees frantically searched notorious prisons such as Sednaya for their loved ones, but only a small number were found and freed.
Mass graves continue to be discovered across Syria. More than 500,000 people were killed in the Syrian conflict, which began in 2011, most of them at the hands of the Assad regime.