Videos released by the Syrian Justice Ministry purportedly showing former officers and doctors confessing to removing organs from detainees have sparked outrage in Syria, with a leading rights group saying the allegations are consistent with patterns of abuse documented under the ousted regime of Bashar al-Assad regime.
The videos, published on social media earlier this week, show detained former military officers and doctors confessing to carrying out operations on detainees held by the Assad regime's intelligence branches, during which kidneys and livers were allegedly removed and transplanted into patients connected to senior security officials.
One of the detainees, a former doctor at Tishreen Military Hospital in Damascus, said he had performed surgery on a detainee held at Branch 215 who was not suffering from any medical condition, removing his liver before it was allegedly transplanted into a first lieutenant in the Republican Guard whose father was reportedly close to former president Bashar al-Assad and his brother, Maher al-Assad.
The doctor said that the detainee died following the procedure.
Syrian state broadcaster Al-Ikhbariah quoted Attorney General Hassan al-Turba as saying that Tishreen Military Hospital had functioned not only as a hospital but also as an extension of the country's intelligence apparatus, where numerous crimes were committed under the control of senior officers.
In 2023, the UK's ITV News reported that regime-allied doctors were torturing patients at the medical facility , which it described as a "horror hospital".
Al-Turba said the organ removal case had involved direct intervention by Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher, adding that investigators had not yet established the identity of the detainee whose liver was allegedly removed.
"So far, the information we have obtained about the detainee comes from individuals who worked at the hospital before defecting," he said, as quoted by local media sources, adding that the detainee had been in good health prior to the operation.
He said the case would now be referred to an investigating judge so that those responsible could face prosecution.
While the specific allegations contained in the videos have not been independently verified, the head of the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), Fadel Abdulghany, told The New Arab that abuses by doctors and medical staff in military hospitals under the former regime had been extensively documented over the course of the conflict.
"These confessions should be treated cautiously while investigations are ongoing," Abdulghany said. "But the practices described inside prisons and military hospitals under Assad are not new to us."
Abdulghany criticised the use of video confessions, saying that investigations into the matter should have been carried out in privacy.
However, he also said that SNHR had documented the torture of detainees transferred to military hospitals, where doctors and nurses were involved in abuse. According to Abdulghany, former detainees consistently described treatment inside some military hospitals as even worse than in the detention facilities themselves.
"There are large numbers of doctors and nurses implicated in war crimes, crimes against humanity , torture and deaths under torture," he said. "This is something we have documented for years, so these confessions were not surprising to us."
Co-founder and executive director of the human rights group Syrians for Truth and Justice, Bassam Alahmad, shared with TNA his own experience as a detainee under the former regime.
"During my detention by the Assad regime in 2012, specifically within the 4th Division - led by Bashar al-Assad’s brother, Maher - I fell severely ill. I was on the verge of asking the guards to transfer me to a hospital, but fellow prisoners stopped me. They warned me that anyone sent to those military hospitals never returns, and that their organs might be trafficked," he said.
He said he would not be shocked if the recent allegations published by the Justice Ministry turned out to be true, adding that he had no doubt medical personnel, particularly in military hospitals, have been complicit in gross human rights violations.
"I have heard similar stories for years while documenting violations in Syria. If this act is verified, we are facing yet another heinous crime - a revelation that could expose similar atrocities and the networks involved."
He stressed that the government must grant international organisations access to Syria, allowing them to investigate the matter along with all other cases "to uncover the full scope of these violations."
The videos have shocked many Syrians, with social media users expressing disbelief that such crimes could have taken place inside state-run hospitals involving medical professionals. Many called for those responsible for abuses committed under the former regime to be held accountable.
Since the fall of Assad's Baathist regime, dozens of former military officers, intelligence officials and other state employees have been detained on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The Syrian conflict erupted in 2011 after Assad's forces violently suppressed anti-regime protests, spiralling into a nearly 14-year civil war that killed more than half a million people, displaced millions more and drew in regional and international powers, leaving much of the country in ruins.