Among them is his father. The Ministry of Interior arrested a number of relatives of "Amjad Youssef"

Internal security forces have arrested a number of relatives   of Amjad Youssef, the main suspect in carrying out the 2013 Tadamon massacre in Damascus, according to the official Syrian News Agency (SANA), citing a security source.

SANA quoted the source as saying that the arrest included Amjad Youssef's father, in addition to other people, the day after the arrest of the accused at his home in the village of "Nabaa al-Tayeb", which belongs to the Al-Suqailbiyah area in Hama countryside.

 The source added that the arrest of these people came due to "suspicion of their involvement in covering up Youssef's disappearance during the past period," and pages on social media circulated yesterday that Amjad's wife was also among those arrested.

Video recordings yesterday showed Youssef's arrest by Syria's Internal Security, and a video circulated on social media showing Interior Minister Anas Khattab overseeing his interrogation.

The Ministry of Interior announces the arrest of Youssef in a tight security operation

The Ministry of Interior announced the arrest of Amjad Youssef, the "first accused" of the massacre of the Tadamon neighborhood that took place in the capital Damascus in 2013.

The ministry said in a statement published on its official identifiers, "The criminal Amjad Youssef, the first accused of committing the solidarity massacre, was arrested by the Internal Security Forces, during a security operation carried out in the countryside of Hama."

The ministry added that "the monitoring and tracking operations continued for several days before implementation in the Al-Ghab plain in Hama countryside, as part of a careful and continuous follow-up," stressing that it will continue to pursue the rest of the perpetrators of the massacre, to arrest them and bring them to justice.

The most trending news on social media

The news   of the arrest of Amjad Youssef during the past 24 hours has become one of the most trending topics on social media platforms, as the wide interaction showed a state of consensus among Syrians on the need to prosecute all those involved in the violations that the country has witnessed over the past years.

Many expressed hope that the arrest of the main suspect in the Tadamon massacre would be the first step in a long path of arrests and accountability for all those who committed crimes against Syrians without exception to the implementation of transitional justice that all Syrians are waiting for.

In the same neighborhood of Tadamon, where the massacre took place in 2013, widespread popular celebrations took place following the announcement of his arrest in a scene that reflected the extent of the wound left by the incident among the residents, and expressions of joy spread to the Syrian governorates, especially in Damascus, where they considered what happened to be the beginning of a long-awaited path towards justice and accountability.

Solidarity Massacre

The Tadamon massacre took place on April 16, 2013, and killed 41 civilians, and their bodies were thrown into a large pit in the Damascus neighborhood of Tadamon by the regime forces, and human bones were later found in the area, according to what the media monitored on December 20, 2024.

The British newspaper "The Guardian" was the first to talk about the massacre, as it published on April 27, 2022, a video clip showing the forces of the "Branch 227" of the regime's military intelligence killing at least 41 people and burning their bodies in the Tadamon neighborhood, and in the clip, "Amjad Youssef", whose face was clearly visible in the photos, was seen shooting at civilians who were arrested blindfolded and handcuffed before throwing  them into a hole in the center of the Damascus neighborhood.