IT WAS clear that Hamza Ali al-Khateeb had been tortured before he died. Returned to his family a month after he was arrested at a peaceful protest in April 2011, the 13-year-old boy’s dead body was covered with cigarette burns and lacerations. His jaw and both kneecaps had been smashed and his penis had been cut off.
As demonstrations against the regime’s rule spread across the country, the boy’s death at the hands of the regime’s security forces became a powerful symbol of its brutality. “I can only hope that this child did not die in vain but that the Syrian government will end the brutality and begin a transition to real democracy,” said Hillary Clinton, who was America’s secretary of state at the time. During the early days of the uprising many shared her hope.
Almost six years on that hope has been crushed. The scale of the killing carried out inside Syria’s torture dungeons is difficult to gauge: human-rights groups say the regime has tortured to death or executed between 17,500 and 60,000 men, women and children since March 2011. The dead, often buried in mass graves or...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2ibykWw
EmoticonEmoticon