Body of activist who disappeared from Netherlands found in Syrian prison
After the fall of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, the rebels who overthrew him opened the regime’s prisons, releasing thousands of prisoners and discovering dozens of bodies. Among the dead is Mazen al-Hamada, a Syrian activist who applied for asylum in the Netherlands. In February 2020, he disappeared from the Netherlands and reappeared in Damascus, where he was arrested by the secret service. His loved ones believe he was abducted by the Assad regime, RTL Nieuws reports.
Al-Hamada’s body was found in the Sednaya military prison near Damascus this week. The complex was nicknamed the “human slaughterhouse.” The Assad regime used it to imprison and torture political prisoners, among others.
Al-Hamada’s friend and brother-in-law confirmed the activist’s death to RTL Nieuws. Brother-in-law Amer Obed lives in the Netherlands and is married to al-Hamada’s sister. He told the broadcaster that the family has seen photos of a body and is “90 percent certain” that it is Mazen. “We think the man in the photo has been dead for about a week and a half. We are almost certain it is him.”
Al-Hamada openly and fiercely campaigned against the Assad regime in 2011. He was arrested and spent over 18 months in prison. He fled Syria and settled in the Netherlands as an asylum seeker, where he testified about the physical, mental, and sexual torture he endured in his country. He became the face of the torture victims of the Assad regime.
In February 2020, he returned to Damascus under unclear circumstances. The secret service arrested him immediately. Family members previously told Trouw that Al-Hamada was on his way to visit a cousin in Germany, but never arrived there. Brother-in-law Obed told RTL Nieuws that the regime abducted him. “As a family, we are disappointed that the Dutch government did not ask Syria for his release.”
Stories are slowly emerging from Syria after the fall of the Assad regime. Images from several prisons around Damascus show dozens of women and children locked up in cells. Many of these children were born in prison and had never seen the sun before.
A pilot named Raghad al-Tatary was freed after 43 years in prison. He refused to carry out a bombing raid on the city of Hama as a conscript in the early 1980s during an uprising against the father of the exiled president. Tal al-Mallouhi was 19 when she was arrested in 2009 after a critical comment in an online blog. A man in his 30s was found unbearably thin, shaking, and barely able to speak. His family had last heard from him 13 years ago.
