Mazen al-Hamada fled Syria to reveal the regime’s crimes. Then, mysteriously, he went back.
Hamada was not a fighter. He served the rebellion by proclaiming the bloody facts of Assad’s treatment of his own people. His work as an activist had landed him in prison several times, including a final stint, starting in 2020, from which he did not emerge. After the rebels surged into the city, his body was discovered in the morgue of a military hospital, along with those of forty other victims of the regime. A coroner found that Hamada had died of “the shock of pain.” In other words, he had been tortured to death.