Killing Anna review – the amazing catfishing operation that flushed out Syria massacre perpetrator

Haunting documentary tells how Syrian academic Annsar Shahoud created an online persona to contact the suspected perpetrator of the Tadamon massacre

Sam Benstead’s piercing documentary charts what you might call an act of noble catfishing: how Amsterdam-based Syrian academic Annsar Shahoud adopted the online identity of “Anna” to coax an al-Assad regime stooge into admitting his crimes. It’s not clear if she and her collaborator, genocide studies professor Uğur Ümit Üngör, are part of the European vigilante networks that inspired last year’s fictional feature Ghost Trail. But the courageous, haunted and psychologically smudgy nature of this work is plain to see here.

When they first watch a video of what became known as the Tadamon massacre, Üngör and Shahoud are appalled at what they see: a procession of Damascan civilians casually murdered and dumped into a tyre-lined pit. They are also exhilarated to finally have incontrovertible proof of al-Assad’s brutality. By combing Facebook they manage to track down the Cheshire Cat-grinned head killer: an intelligence agent called Amjad Youssef. Posing as Anna, a Syrian expat writing a sympathetic thesis about the regime, Shahoud makes tentative first contact with Youssef by video call. For a spook, it is surprising how a few well-chosen signifiers work wonders on him: the portraits of Hafez and Bashar al-Assad on Anna’s wall, the Shia sword pendant around her neck.

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