2024-12-13 09:31:00
“We will not forget your blood, Mazen,” hundreds of people shouted Thursday outside the Al-Mujtahid hospital in Damascus, Syria, during the burial of the 47-year-old activist, whose body was found in the hospital morgue, after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The agony of Mazen al-Hamada has become one of the symbols of the atrocities suffered under the Assad regime, overthrown on Sunday by a lightning offensive by the islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
In the funeral procession many people waved the three-star flag, a symbol of the syrian opposition during the civil war, and which has as been adopted by the country’s new leaders.Many also tried to comfort the activist’s mother, whose cries echoed. “I contacted a doctor and sent him a video and a photo… He told me he was executed about ten days ago,” said the deceased’s sister,Amal.
Twice imprisoned under Bashar al-Assad’s regime
Mazen al-Hamada was imprisoned twice under Bashar al-Assad’s regime, first in 2011, during the Arab Spring protests in Syria, before managing to escape and flee to the Netherlands in 2014, where he sought asylum . Returning to Syria in 2020, he was quickly arrested upon arrival at Damascus airport, before being permanently imprisoned.
Earlier in the week, the opponent’s body was found along wiht those of 35 people in the morgue of a hospital in the Harasta suburb of Damascus, many of whom bore signs of torture.
“They destroyed my childhood”
According to Diab Seria, a member of the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Sednaya Prison, Harasta Hospital was the final destination where those who died in detention “were rounded up before being buried in mass graves”.
“They destroyed good memories, they destroyed my childhood, my youth,” Mazen al-Hamada said in a widely circulated video interview, given during his stay in the Netherlands, about his first stint in regime prisons Syrian.
Our dossier on Syria
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, around 60,000 people have died due to torture or prison conditions under the Assad regime since the civil war began in 2011.