An investigation carried out by the Russian newspaper “Novaya Gazeta” published a video on April 21, showing members of Russian Wagner forces (Russian company provides mercenaries to world countries) where they are torturing, disfiguring and burning a corpse of a victim whose name was reported in the investigation as Hammadi al Bouti while according to investigation carried out by SNHR by contacting the victim’s family SNHR confirm that the victim’s name is Muhammad Taha al Ismail. The victim is from al Kharrita village in the western suburbs of Deir Ez-Zour governorate. He was arrested in 2017 by Syrian regime forces at Syrian- Lebanese border while he was turned from Lebanon to Syria and was taken for conscription. He was arrested again as he was trying to dissent and flee, as documented by SNHR.

Several videos were published earlier on November 15, 2019, showing severe torture operation applied on the Syrian citizen Muhammad al Ismail to death where the forces burnt and disfigured his corpse by gunmen talking Russian. The image was published by the Russian newspaper “Novaya Gazeta” on April 21, 2020, where it is proven that the Russian Wagner forces killed the Syrian citizen and disfigured his corpse in al Sha’er Gas field in Homs governorate which is guarded by Euro Police company- the legal face of Wagner which is unregistered since the summer of 2017.

The image captured from the video included in the investigation which was published by the newspaper that Wagner mercenaries are happy after they hanged the corpse of the victim upside down after torturing him and decapitating his head where they wrote VDV in Russian which means “Russian Airborne Troops”.

The act of Wagner forces is similar to the acts of the terrorist organization of ISIS in their videos that published during years which was condemned widely by the world’s countries. We hope that such barbaric acts carried out by mercenaries of Wagner will face the same level of condemnation as terrorist acts and blatant violation of the International Humanitarian Law.