Syrian private airport plans spark outcry over mass graves, land rights

DAMASCUS, Sept 12 - 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. Subsequent correspondence discussed a firing range and later a hangar beside the runway as execution sites.

The documents, which underscore the central role of Mezzeh in the Assad-era security system, show officials ordered construction of a platform at the hangar, requested nylon rope and directed that the work be carried out under AFI supervision “in utmost secrecy.”

A 2025 investigation by SJAC identified two suspected grave sites linked to people who died in detention at Mezzeh, where it said more than 1,150 detainees died, some by execution and others from torture or maltreatment.

In a July 2025 letter seen by Reuters, SJAC provided Syria’s National Commission for Missing Persons with the coordinates of the two suspected graves inside the airport, urging authorities to prevent construction or excavation until the sites were investigated.

The commission told SJAC at the time that there were no construction or refurbishment plans for Mezzeh, SJAC told Reuters.

SJAC wrote to the commission again on September 8 after the redevelopment plans emerged, warning that excavation, rubble removal or other works could damage human remains and evidence crucial to identifying victims, according to a second letter seen by Reuters.

SJAC told Reuters it had not yet received a response to its second letter.

Amer Matar, founder of the Syria Prisons Museum, a Germany-based NGO documenting detention facilities including those at Mezzeh, said the planned works showed a lack of respect for Syrian families who still have no answers on the fate of loved ones detained under Assad.

"To construct a business airport on a site that may contain mass graves, without a thorough prior investigation, without site protection, without searching for the missing and their remains, and without preserving evidence, is an act of extreme recklessness and disregard," Matar told Reuters.

The Syrian civil aviation authority, Syria's National Commission for Missing Persons and Syria's defense ministry, which has been operating the airport, did not respond to questions from Reuters about suspected graves and land claims.

SANA cited the civil aviation authority's spokesperson as saying that Mezzeh's refurbishment would take into account the surrounding urban area and relevant legal and social issues, but did not specifically mention the graves or land rights. It is unclear who will develop the airport.

The dispute over the land on which airport facilities were built is decades old.

Under the Assads, private land was regularly expropriated for government projects, often without compensation.

Mezzeh airport was built on land belonging to hundreds of private citizens across 2.76 sq km (1.1 square miles), according to land records from the Moadamiya municipality shared with Reuters.

A former municipal official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters that expropriation decrees retroactively justified the government's use of those lands when the airport was built in 1956, and that compensation had not been paid.

Residents demonstrated in Moadamiya a day after the redevelopment plans were announced. “We welcome investment, but we should be sitting at the table and discussing our share with investors, not the state,” said one protest organiser, who gave his name as Abu Khaled. “We have a documented right to this land.”

The dispute comes as Syria faces calls to address Assad-era property seizures.

On September 2, United Nations land rights experts appealed to Syria's government to suspend and repeal laws they said had enabled systematic property dispossession under Assad, and to either establish mechanisms to return properties to their legitimate owners, or provide adequate compensation. REUTERS