Syrians left mass graves

last updated 8 January 2015

Anjar, Lebanon

Lebanese investigators have found two mass graves in Al-Biqa Valley, the former headquarters of the Syrian intelligence service in Lebanon. The scattered bones belonged to an estimated 27 people, three of them children, and seem to date to the early 1990s, when Syria controlled the country. “What we whispered among ourselves, and never dared to say out loud, today came out screaming as solid proof of crimes conducted in the blackest time of Lebanese history,” said Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel. The Syrian government said it has no knowledge of the graves and that the bodies must have been casualties of Lebanon’s civil war, which ended in the late 1980s. Lebanese demonstrations and international pressure drove Syrian troops out of Lebanon this past spring.