Plans for new airport in Damascus sparks outcry over disturbance of thousands of graves

Syrian government plans to turn a former military airport in Damascus into a hub for private jets are raising alarm among rights groups and residents who say redevelopment could disturb suspected mass graves and override private land claims.

Syria’s civil aviation authority said last week it was preparing to reclassify Mezzeh military airport for limited civilian use, focused on private and executive aviation, to complement Damascus International Airport, according to a report on ⁠Syria's state news agency, SANA. Rubble removal and infrastructure upgrades had already begun, the report said.

The project is emerging as a test of how Syria’s new authorities balance a drive to attract investment and redevelop state assets with two unresolved legacies of Assad’s family rule: the fate of tens of thousands of missing Syrians and property rights clouded by decades of expropriation.

Under ousted ruler Bashar al-Assad and his father Hafez, Mezzeh housed key branches of the powerful Air Force Intelligence Directorate, as well as numerous detention facilities where suspected government opponents were tortured, executed and subjected to enforced ⁠disappearance. Parts of the air base were used for presidential and other official flights.

Air Force Intelligence (AFI) ​documents ⁠recently obtained by the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC), a U.S.-based Syrian-led human rights group, and shared exclusively with Reuters, show that senior Syrian military officials approved Mezzeh in 2012 as a site for carrying out executions of detainees sentenced to death by military field courts.

One document proposed moving executions from Sednaya — the country's most notorious ⁠prison at the time — to Mezzeh because it was a "closed security compound" close to Damascus.