Residents of the Tadamon district took to the streets to celebrate Amjad Youssef’s arrest [Getty]
Syria’s interior ministry on Saturday revealed details around the security operation that resulted in the capture and arrest of Amjad Youssef, one of the key suspects behind the notorious Tadamon massacre of 2013.
Authorities announced that he was arrested on Friday in an operation carried out by Internal Security Forces in the Hama countryside, in central Syria.
The arrest was confirmed on the social media platform X by Interior Minister Anas Khattab, who called it a “well-executed” operation.
Up to 288 people were killed in the April 2013 Tadamon massacre, video footage of which was revealed many years later. The videos appear to show Youssef and other Assad regime security officers executing unarmed civilians before burying their bodies in mass graves.
Interior ministry spokesperson Noureddine al-Baba told local media that Youssef had been on wanted lists for a long time, but had been in hiding since the fall of the regime of former dictator Bashar al-Assad.
He said that two previous attempts to arrest him had failed. The first was around Assad’s hometown of Qardaha, just after the fall of the dictator, and the second was in the al-Ghab Plain in late September.
Al-Baba said that before Youssef’s arrest, an operations room directly supervised by the Minister of Interior had been formed to capture him, and that counter-terrorism departments were also involved.
He added that the Internal Security Command in Hama carried out the mission.
According to al-Baba, the entire operation took over a month to plan and execute, and involved thorough monitoring and surveillance.
Security forces were able to enter the site where Youssef was hiding and arrest him. No civilians were harmed during the operation, according to Syrian authorities.
Sources also told The New Arab that Syrian Internal Security forces also arrested some of Youssef’s relatives, including his father Ali, his sister Haifa, and Ayham, a relative, as well as other individuals.
The sources said that as of Saturday afternoon, security forces remain deployed in the area and are continuing search operations for other wanted people, suspected of being involved in the Tadamon massacre.
Syrian media outlets have since featured footage of Interior Minister Anas Khattab personally interrogating Youssef.
Khattab directly addresses him, saying: “Do you have no heart to kill all these people in this way.”
He proceeds to say that Youssef was “devoid of humanity”.
The Syrian Minister of Interior, Anas Khattab, confronts the criminal Amjad Youssef with documented videos of his crimes pic.twitter.com/U17wHiGoaA
— Fared Al Mahlool | فريد المحلول (@FARED_ALHOR) April 24, 2026
The arrest of Youssef has been praised by many activists, who have long sought for justice and accountability for crimes committed under the Assad regime.
Residents of the Tadamon district immediately took to the streets to celebrate Youssef’s arrest and to honour the victims. The residents marched in the streets, some of them holding images of their loved ones killed in the massacre.
Many have recirculated old video footage of him carrying out mass executions, adding that his actions symbolised the brutality of the Assad regime.
In one video, he is seen shooting people, with their bodies instantly falling into a pre-prepared mass grave.
The 2013 massacre saw Youssef, alongside other prominent figures, kill unarmed civilians after capturing Tadamon from opposition forces.
