13-year-old boy tortured and killed in Syria

[Jenna]

Arrested during a protest in Saida, 10km east of Daraa, on April 29, Hamza's body was returned to his family on Tuesday 24th May, horribly mutilated.

The child had spent nearly a month in the custody of Syrian security, and when they finally returned his corpse it bore the scars of brutal torture: Lacerations, bruises and burns to his feet, elbows, face and knees, consistent with the use of electric shock devices and of being whipped with cable, both techniques of torture documented by Human Rights Watch as being used in Syrian prisons during the bloody three-month crackdown on protestors.

Hamza's eyes were swollen and black and there were identical bullet wounds where he had apparently been shot through both arms, the bullets tearing a hole in his sides and lodging in his belly.

On Hamza's chest was a deep, dark burn mark. His neck was broken and his penis cut off.

Torture in Syrian prisons, long known as some of the worst in the world, is now "rampant" according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

"When you have mass execution and torture it rises to the level of a crime against humanity. In Syria, it appears clear that this has become widespread and systematic," said Ricken Patel, director of Avaaz, which has been documenting human rights abuses in the country.

"This is a campaign of mass terrorism and intimidation: Horribly tortured people sent back to communities by a regime not trying to cover up its crimes, but to advertise them."

If advertising its crimes is indeed the regime's strategy then it appears to be working: Within hours of the video of Hamza's mutilated body going online a protest broke out in Daraa city by hundreds of furious residents, defying the ongoing military siege to express their outrage at Hamza's torture and killing.

"People here are really furious about what happened to Hamza and this is another sign that the secret police and the authorities are criminals who cannot be trusted to make any reforms," said the activist, who travels widely in the Deraa region.

A week after his body was returned, a Facebook page dedicated to Hamza had more than 60,000 followers, under the title, "We are all Hamza al-Khateeb", a deliberate echo of the online campaign on behalf of Khaled Saeed, the young Egyptian whose death in police custody last year proved a trigger for the revolution in Cairo.

More here: Tortured and killed: Hamza al-Khateeb, age 13 - Features - Al Jazeera English

Rest in peace.

[lewisipso]

Now that sounds like torture. Unbelievable.

[MacLean]

Ahh, yes. What a beautiful part of the world, and we should all learn to accept their different culture as equal to our own and respect the differences contained in the practice of the religion of peace.

Or, we could turn it into a parking lot.

[lewisipso]

Hand raised for parking lot.

[Jenna]

Hamza Ali al-Khateeb, the Syrian boy whose killing has enraged, mobilized and emboldened the country's opposition movement, once harbored dreams of being a police officer.
But the 13-year-old changed his ambitions when the government crackdown went into full swing.
"When he saw police officers kill the people in the revolution, he would say, 'The police kill the people and I don't want to be like them. I do not know what I will be but the police kill people and torture them,'" according to one of his relatives, who escaped to Kuwait amid the regime's suppression of protesters.
The relative asked not to be named out of fear for the safety of his family in Daraa, the southwestern city where the anti-regime demonstrations started in mid-March.

Slain Syrian boy once wanted to be a cop -- before the crackdown - CNN.com

[lewisipso]

Not just any parking lot but a paved one.

[Jenna]

What happens to boys like this who haven't been killed yet if their country is turned into a parking lot?

[McCrackhd]

Ahh, yes. What a beautiful part of the world, and we should all learn to accept their different culture as equal to our own and respect the differences contained in the practice of the religion of peace.

Or, we could turn it into a parking lot.

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