The investigation team into the Tadamon massacre denies hiding any evidence or information
The investigative team that uncovered the details of the Damascus solidarity massacre, made up of Syrian researcher Ansar Shahoud and Dutch-Turkish academic Ugur Ümit Üngür, denied accusations that he had withheld or concealed evidence related to the case.
The denial came in an official statement issued on Sunday, May 31, 2026, in response to a wave of widespread criticism spread on social media platforms regarding the handing over of evidence in the case of Rania Al-Abbasi's children, where the team confirmed that it did not hide any evidence or information related to the victims of the massacre, and that the task of identifying the victims rests with the competent judicial authorities and not the researchers.
Panel: Disinformation obstructs justice
In its statement, the team considered that misinformation and rumors circulating on social media hinder access to truth and justice, calling for relying on published research materials about the solidarity massacre instead of undocumented information or what it described as "conspiracy theories."
In its statement, the team stressed that the responsibility for identifying the victims and revealing their fates is not a research task, but a purely judicial one, and that it rests with competent authorities such as the German Federal Public Prosecutor's Office, which has the necessary powers and procedures to deal with this type of sensitive case.
The team explained that it had handed over all the materials and evidence in its possession since April 2022 to the judicial authorities in Germany and the Netherlands, that is, before the publication of the journalistic investigation that revealed the massacre, including videos and full documents, which completely negates the allegations of blocked or non-Muslim content.
Panel: We adhere to European court standards
The statement reiterated the team's strict adherence to the Chain of Custody, the standards imposed by European courts to ensure the integrity of evidence and not tampering with it, under which the publication of videos in public is prohibited so as not to affect ongoing trials or to cast doubt on evidence.
In the face of images circulating on social media, the team stressed that they had nothing to do with any of the original footage it had seen during the investigation, denying that there were any scenes of child executions in the material it examined.
The statement reiterated that the team was committed from the first moment to respect the dignity of the victims and their families, and refrained from publishing the painful clips in order to avoid re-terrorizing the Syrian society and to preserve the feelings of the families who are still living the trauma of the loss.
In conclusion, the team described the accusations against him as an unacceptable smear campaign, aimed at distorting efforts to uncover the truth and obstruct justice in one of Syria's most heinous crimes.
Controversy after the fate of Abbasi's children was announced
The statement came after a wave of criticism following the announcement by the National Commission for Missing Persons in Syria on Saturday (May 30th) that it had reached "reliable and intersecting" conclusions that the six children of Dr. Rania al-Abbasi, who were arrested with their mother in 2013, had died.
The children's uncle, Hossam al-Abbasi, said in a video that the family had been misled about the identity of the children seen in videos linked to the Amjad Youssef case, adding that he had been in contact with members of the Tadamon massacre investigation team over the past months to obtain information related to these recordings.
Al-Abbasi said that some members of the team had previously told him that the children in the recordings were not his sister's children, before later data emerged that led the family to believe that the children who appeared in the videos were indeed Rania al-Abbasi's children.
He also criticized the way the National Commission for Missing Persons announced the results of the investigation, considering that it did not give the family enough time to psychologically prepare its members to receive the news.
The case of Rania al-Abbasi's children became the focus of a wide controversy, after the Syrian Ministry of Interior announced the existence of evidence pointing to the death of the children, and announced that preliminary investigations showed the involvement of former officer Amjad Youssef in the case, with investigations continuing to uncover the circumstances of the crime and identify those responsible.
German judiciary prosecutes defendants in Tadamon neighborhood crimes
Trials for crimes committed in Damascus's Tadamon neighborhood are conducted before German courts, based on the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows Germany to prosecute perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity regardless of where they occurred or the nationality of the victims and perpetrators.
Condemnation of "Solidarity Turks" December 2024
On June 25, 2025, the Hamburg Regional High Court issued a final sentence of 10 years in prison against the Syrian defendant Ahmed Hamrouni, known as "Turks of Solidarity", after he was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Tadamon neighborhood.
The court was found to have been the leader of a local militia affiliated with the National Defence (NDF) between 2012 and 2015, detaining civilians at checkpoints and forcing them to carry sandbags under fire.
The deliberations revealed that he tried to bribe the court interpreter with $100,000 to help him escape, but the interpreter immediately informed the judge of the incident.
This sentence is an extension of a judicial process that began on January 13, 2022, when the Koblenz court issued a life sentence against Colonel Anwar Raslan, the former head of the investigations department at the Al-Khatib branch in Damascus, in a case that formed the legal basis for the solidarity trials later, and was preceded on February 24, 2021, by the conviction of former officer Iyad Al-Gharib to four and a half years in prison on charges of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity.
Current Cases Under Trial
Since April 2026, a new Syrian defendant, known as the "prison guard", has been in pretrial detention since May 2025 on charges related to the deaths of around 70 detainees and participation in torture and electric shocks between 2011 and 2012.
A group of 5 new defendants, who were arrested in 2026, are undergoing extensive investigation sessions related to the commission of murders and torture in the Tadamon neighborhood and its surroundings, based on visual evidence and survivors' testimonies, without prior announcement of the dates of the sentences in order to maintain the confidentiality of the proceedings.
The Solidarity Massacre as a Legal Background
Although the defendants arrested in Germany did not appear in the video of Amjad Youssef's famous execution, federal prosecutors used the massacre file as a backdrop to prove that there was a systematic and widespread attack against civilians in the neighborhood, leading to the classification of the acts as crimes against humanity and the severity of the sentences.
German courts rely on visual evidence and testimonies collected by the Solidarity Massacre Investigation Team led by supporters of Shahoud and Ugur Ümit Ungur, which has been officially handed over to German and Dutch prosecutors since 2022. These materials are subject to the Legal Chain of Possession Protocol to ensure that they are certified as conclusive evidence against any accused identified within European territory.