Mass graves in Syria reveal possible war crimes

{O/C} Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime is notorious for killing political dissidents opposing his dictatorship.

Now, new evidence from mass graves in the embattled country suggests the Syrian government may have committed war crimes that it has repeatedly denied.

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Throughout Syria's bestial civil war that persisted without cease for 11 years, various human rights groups and government defectors have documented the widespread and brutal slaughter of dissenting civilians.

President Bashar al-Assad calls all the shots and does not brook any dissent.

The deceased were buried near the capital of Damascus.

The New York Times recently interviewed four Syrian workers who worked at or near the secret mass graves where the dead were buried.

Following the uprising that serves as the prelude to the civil war in 2011, al-Assad activated his network of security agencies to stamp out dissent by persecuting protesters, outspoken critics and other dissidents.

Images of more than 6,000 corpses, with many of which bearing signs of torture, attest to the fact many may have been slaughtered on the sly.

The U.S. Treasury Department said last year that at least 14,000 of the detainees were mercilessly tortured to death. As such, more than 130,000 others have disappeared after being taken into government detention centres. They are now presumed dead.

And there is now proof the Syrian government deliberately hid evidence of war crimes. Some workers who worked at two mass grave sites in Syria averred the workers were tasked with surrounding the dead bodies with dirt tightly so that dogs will not dig up the bodies.

An anonymous worker even testified that bruises and missing fingernails were spotted on some of the bodies, with some already decomposing, indicating they may have been bludgeoned to death a while ago before they were officially buried.

In spite of fresh evidence corroborating the theory, the Syrian government continues to deny mass killings of civilians that is considered way out of line, and stands pat on countering western influence.