Arabic → English transcript

I am Amjad Yusuf, First Assistant. I used to work in the intelligence division.

In the Regional Branch, Branch 227. I joined the military service in 2004.

For a full one- year course. I graduated in 2005… 2006, excuse me, 2006.

With the rank of sergeant… staff sergeant.

And I continued as a staff sergeant until I was promoted to assistant. And then the

regime fell, when I held the rank of assistant. The video that spread on

social media, in which it appears that Amjad Yusuf is me. And in which it appeared

that before…

that at the beginning of the crisis, roughly the beginning of the revolution.

What happened is that I and Najeeb with me, this is Najeeb al- Halabi,

he was with the National Defense.

And he was one of its members, a cameraman,

I do not remember what the cameraman’s name was, I mean.

We had brought before that roughly about forty people.

On the basis that at that time they were all terrorists or financiers…

providing financial support to terrorism. As for the soldiers,

there was no one present except me. We drove them to the pit that had been dug…

dug by a backhoe. And I opened

fire on… Just like you saw in the video clip, sometimes I’d wait for him to go down

into the pit, sometimes I’d shoot him before he went down into the pit. Sometimes I

forced him so that Najib would be the one who shot, until we were done with them.

And after we finished the shooting, we had put tires on the ground

under them. Then we would put tires on top of them and light a

fire on top of them, so that… so that there wouldn’t be any smell in the area.

We lit a fire on top of them and we buried the pit, I mean he buried it after a day,

after two days.— You,

by your own decision Yourself?— I do that by my own decision, I, without…

I do not have a military rank that gave me… an order, or an officer, or a general.

If I had one, I would say so Look, on the contrary,

I take the responsibility off myself. By God, I did not choose the victims.

It was not my choice, the number of forty

people was not agreed on, I mean. This is how it happened,

this is how the circumstances formed and this number came to be, I mean.

We did not choose them. I go out with him in a jeep… so- and- so, for example,

so- and- so, someone about whom there is information, or someone came…

and wrote a report about him, or…

We got information that he’d been with the gunmen in some area,

and he turned out to be, for example. And he was hiding in a safe house.

So- and- so had been supporting the gunmen with… supplies or any thing.

That’s how the information came in,

and based on it we would go out and bring him in.