Plans to convert Damascus’s Al-Mezzeh military airport into an investment hub for private aviation have raised rights concerns that criminal evidence and human remains could be damaged at two sites suspected of being mass graves inside the airport. Leaked documents indicate it has been used to carry out executions of detainees since 2012.
Plan to convert Al-Mezzeh Airport into a civilian facility
Omar al-Hosari, head of the Syrian Civil Aviation Authority, announced during the Syrian-Saudi Investment Forum in Damascus on July 24, 2025, that the authority intended to invest in the military airport and convert it into a civilian airport. The concerns emerged after the Syrian Center for Justice and Accountability, a US-based rights organization led by Syrians, obtained documents from Syrian Air Force Intelligence.
One document proposed moving executions from Saydnaya Prison to Al-Mezzeh Airport, describing it as a closed security compound close to the capital. Subsequent correspondence discussed using a firing range, followed by an aircraft hangar adjacent to the runway, to carry out the executions.
Documents identify possible sites where executions were carried out
In July 2025, the center sent the coordinates of the two suspected sites to Syria’s National Authority for Missing Persons and called for all construction or excavation work to be halted until investigations were completed. It said the authority told it at the time that there were no plans for construction or redevelopment at the airport.
Warnings that remains and criminal evidence could be destroyed
The center contacted the authority again on September 8 after the development plans emerged, warning that excavation, rubble removal and other construction activities could damage remains and evidence needed to identify the dead. The National Authority for Missing Persons was established by presidential decree in May 2025 and tasked with determining the fate of missing and forcibly disappeared people, documenting cases and creating a national database, as well as providing legal and humanitarian support to their families.
During the rule of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his father, Hafez al-Assad, the airport housed key branches of Air Force Intelligence and detention facilities. The material indicates that opponents of the government were tortured, executed and forcibly disappeared inside those facilities. During the Syrian revolution, the airport also played a role in managing military movements and providing fire support for shelling surrounding areas, particularly Darayya and Mouadamiyat al-Sham.
It housed personnel from the Republican Guard, special forces and Air Force Intelligence, as well as detention facilities and warehouses for captagon. The development plan also raises questions about ownership of the airport land. Property records from the municipality of Mouadamiyat al-Sham show that the facility was built on an area measuring 2.76 square kilometers owned by hundreds of citizens.
A former municipal official, who asked not to be identified, said expropriation decrees were used retroactively to justify the government’s use of the land when the airport was built in 1956, and that its owners received no compensation. A day after the development plan was announced, residents of Mouadamiyat al-Sham held a protest demanding to be included in discussions with investors about their rights.
One of the protest organizers, who identified himself as Abu Khaled, said residents welcomed investment, adding: "We have a documented right to this land." The case coincides with a call by UN land-rights experts on September 2 for the Syrian government to suspend and repeal laws they said had enabled systematic expropriation, and to establish mechanisms for returning property to its owners or providing them with appropriate compensation.
