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Damascus, Syria — <\/span>Syrian authorities said Friday they have arrested a former intelligence officer who came forward a video leaked<\/a> Four years ago he and his comrades were reportedly shown shooting dozens of people during the country’s conflict. <\/p>\n The Interior Ministry said Amjad Youssef was arrested in the central province of Hama, where he was hiding, and posted a photo of him in a striped prison uniform.<\/p>\n Since rebels ousted former President Bashar Assad in December 2024, dozens of members of his security agencies have been arrested, blamed for atrocities during the conflict. Assad fled to Russia. <\/p>\n The conflict, which began with anti-government protests in March 2011 before turning into a civil war, has killed half a million people and injured more than 1 million.<\/p>\n Youssef was one of several Syrian security agents who officials say appeared in a video leaked in 2022 showing dozens of blindfolded, bound people being shot and thrown into a ditch. <\/p>\n The 6-minute and 43-second clip shows members of Syria’s notorious military intelligence branch 227 with a line of about 40 prisoners in an abandoned building in Tadamon, a suburb of Damascus near the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk. During much of the war, the district was the front line between government forces and opposition fighters.<\/p>\n The prisoners were blindfolded and their hands were tied behind their backs. One by one, Branch 227’s gunmen line them up at the edge of a ditch filled with old tires, then push or kick the men, shooting them as they fall.<\/p>\n In the video, intelligence agents tell some prisoners that they are about to pass through a sniper alley and that they should run away. They fall upon the bodies of those who had gone before them. As bodies pile up in the ditch, some still moving, the gunmen open fire into the pile. <\/p>\n The gunmen later set the bodies on fire, possibly to destroy evidence of the massacre.<\/p>\n Last year, security forces in Syria said they three people arrested<\/a> Involved in those murders.<\/p>\n The Interior Ministry said in a statement Friday that authorities would pursue all those involved in the Tadamon shooting to bring them to justice.<\/p>\n