Reckoning with the Assad Regime’s ‘Machinery of Death’ : Up First from NPR

Abu Fadi, an excavator driver, points out where he dug trenches where bodies were buried in a mass grave site in Qutayfa, Syria.

Claire Harbage/NPR

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Claire Harbage/NPR

Abu Fadi, an excavator driver, points out where he dug trenches where bodies were buried in a mass grave site in Qutayfa, Syria.

Claire Harbage/NPR

The fall of Syria’s leader in December opened the doors to a vast network of detention centers and prisons across the country, uncovering further evidence of the true scale of killings under former president Bashar al-Assad.

On this episode of The Sunday Story, NPR’s Ruth Sherlock takes us to a notorious prison where thousands were detained and killed, and she visits a suspected mass gravesite outside Damascus. She meets former prisoners and those forced to play a role in what has been called the regime’s “machinery of death.”

This episode was produced by Justine Yan and edited by Jenny Schmidt. The engineer was Gilly Moon.

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