Syria’s ‘icon of freedom’ killed inside Bashar al-Assad’s notorious Sednaya prison
Thousands of Syrians attended Mazen Hamada’s funeral, after he was found dead after being freshly tortured in the last hours of the regime in the notorious Sednaya prison.
Mazen al-Hamada was a symbol of Bashar al-Assad’s cruelty. On Tuesday, the 47-year-old Syrian activist was found dead in Sednaya prison.
His body was found with 40 other inmates, wrapped in a bloodied sheet, killed in the final hours of Assad’s rule. Mr Hamada didn’t live to see the dictator fall. Instead, he was left with fresh signs of torture, his lifeless face frozen in pain. On Thursday he was given a hero’s funeral.
“The people of Syria want to execute al-Assad,” the crowd chanted as they carried his coffin through the streets of Damascus, many waving the three-starred flag of the Syrian opposition.
Hamada, a Syrian activist, escaped to Europe in 2014 after suffering unimaginable horrors in the regime’s brutal prison system. There, he set about telling his story, reliving the torture he had gone through for the benefit of human rights lawyers, the United Nations and countless documentarians.
His haunted features and wide eyes became the public face of the largely unseen suffering being endured in Syrian jails by tens of thousands of prisoners.
“I’m here for Mazen and the revolution,” Ali al-Hamoud shouted over the chants. Hailing from the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor, just like Hamada, Hamoud felt connected to the late activist. He said: “He’s an icon of freedom. He’s like a brother to me and all Syrians.”
Hamoud was interrupted by the sharp rattle of AK-47 fire. A member of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the former jihadist group that now controls Syria, fired his machine gun into the air in celebration. Quickly a mob surrounded the militant.
“We haven’t been out in days and now you do this?” the crowd scolded the sheepish looking young man. No more gunfire was heard.
It was the first time many civilians from the capital had gathered in one place – too afraid to venture out after the collapse of the regime, the Israeli bombardment of military sites and the countless celebratory bullets fired into the air.
They came in their hundreds, following the coffin on the 1.6km-long journey from Damascus Hospital to al-Hijazi Square. Young men and women ran ahead of the ambulance leading the procession. They hugged and cheered, and yet they still glanced over their shoulder.
Noura al-Sharika was one of those still treading carefully on the streets of Damascus.
“We still feel the fear of Assad. We don’t know how to deal with our freedom,” the 25-year-old said as the coffin reached the square. “We don’t know what to feel.”
For Hamada himself, his disappointment with the West outweighed his fear of Assad. It finally killed him.
In 2020 he went home to Syria. His reasons for doing so remain unclear. Mourners at the funeral told The Times that Hamada had been threatened by the regime to come home to prevent his family being targeted. Hamada himself sent a message to his sister saying: “I want to offer up myself to stop the bloodshed that is happening. That’s all.”
For Mouaz Moustafa of the US-based Syrian Emergency Task Force advocacy group who worked closely with Hamada, his friend’s reasons for returning were simple.
“He told his story to the whole world, to congress and in London, and nobody did anything about what was happening in Syria,” Moustafa said, before describing his friend’s disappointment. “Mazen said, ‘we told everyone everything and nobody cares’.”
According to Moustafa, Hamada felt he had made enough connections around the world and could return home to effect real change. However, at the same time his mental health had deteriorated and a pro-regime cell in Berlin, where Hamada lived with his nephew and Syria has an embassy, made contact. They preyed upon him according to Moustafa. They gave him drugs, a fresh Syrian passport, not easy to get for someone with no money, and the belief that he could return to Syria safely.
The last time he was seen was at Berlin airport with a woman from the Syrian embassy in Germany.
“It’s devastating. Mazen was family. He stayed with my family when he came to Arkansas,” Moustafa told The Times. “They killed him in the last minutes and we couldn’t save him.”
Hamada’s story is the story of many Syrian families. Except his body was found and his family has a grave to visit. Not all Syrians are afforded that luxury.
At the funeral, there were tears of joy as friends who had been torn apart by the war and the regime hugged for the first time in years, reunited in what they believe is a free Syria. Young women took selfies draped in the new Syrian flag and chanted Hamada’s name.
Sharika turned to look at a young man who had scaled the old Ottoman era Hijazi building chanting that Assad be brought to justice.
“We are free now and will never be quiet,” she said. “Free people will never shut their mouths. We lived in fear and silence but now we can open our mouths and shout.”
The Times
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