Syria’s government has ordered soldiers to guard a mass grave created to conceal atrocities under Bashar al-Assad ‍and has opened a criminal investigation, following a Reuters report that revealed a yearslong conspiracy by the fallen dictatorship to hide thousands of bodies on the remote desert site.

Axar.az informs the site, in the Dhumair desert east of Damascus, was used during ‍Assad’s rule as a military weapons depot, according to a former Syrian army officer with knowledge of the operation.

It was later emptied of personnel in 2018 to ensure secrecy for a plot that involved unearthing the bodies of thousands of victims of the dictatorship buried in a mass grave on the outskirts of Damascus and trucking them an hour’s drive away to Dhumair.

The plot, orchestrated by the dictator’s inner circle, was called “Operation Move Earth.”

Soldiers are stationed at the Dhumair site again, this time by the government that overthrew Assad.

In November, police opened an investigation into the grave, photographing it, carrying out land surveys and interviewing witnesses, according to Jalal Tabash, head of the al-Dhumair police station. Among those ‍interviewed by police was Ahmed Ghazal, a key source for the Reuters investigation that exposed the mass grave.

“I told them all the details I told you about the operation and what I witnessed during those years,” said Ghazal, a mechanic who ‍repaired trucks carrying bodies that broke down at the Dhumair grave site. Ghazal ‍confirmed that during the time of “Operation Move ⁠Earth,” the military installation appeared vacant except for the soldiers involved in accompanying the convoys.