After five decades of the Assad family dictatorship came to an end in the past two weeks, one prisoner’s story has been widely shared online—Mazen al-Hamada. His gaunt face and haunted eyes have become a symbol of Syrian resistance. On Mondaymega swerte, al-Hamada’s body was discovered in the Harasta Military Hospital morgue near the capital city Damascus. He was a former prisoner of Bashar al-Assad’s security services and an early activist in the 2011 Syrian uprising.

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On Thursday, hundreds of Syrians marched through Damascus in a funeral procession to honour al-Hamada. “We will not forget your blood, Mazen,” the marchers, most of them young people, chanted outside a mosque while family and friends held funeral prayers inside, the Associated Press reported. Others chanted: “We will get our revenge, Bashar. We will bring you before the law.” Many participants told the media that they last protested in Damascus some 13 years ago, before Assad's crackdown on protesters turned the conflict into a full-scale war.

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The capture of Damascus by rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) last weekend led to street celebrations, and Thursday’s march evoked memories of the funerals-turned-protests from the early days of the uprising against Assad.

Mazen al-Hamada was among Syria’s most prominent anti-government activists. In the early days of the Arab Spring, he joined protests and demanded the fall of President Bashar al-Assad's regime. For his activism, he was repeatedly arrested and tortured in the country’s notorious prison system. Over nearly two years, he endured medieval torture techniques, sexual assault, beatings, and severe psychological abuse.

After his release, al-Hamada returned to his hometown of Deir Ezzor, only to find it in ruins. Fearing for his life, he fled Syria in 2014 and settled in the Netherlands. In Europe, he gained prominence by sharing details of the torture he endured in regime prisons. 

A 2017 documentary featured his testimony, where he described horrific abuses. “They laid me on the ground and broke my ribs,” he recounted. “(An officer) would jump up and come down on my body as hard as he could. I could hear my bones snapping.”

When asked about his abusers, he tearfully stated, “I will not rest until I take them to court and get justice—justice for me and my friends who were killed.”

مازن حمادة معتقل سوري سابق هرب من الجحيم إلى هولندا، ثم ظهر في مقابلة تلفزيونية يفضح وحشية النظام السوري وتعذيبه للمعتقلين.مازن كان يشرح كل شيء حدث بالتفصيل لكن عندما تم سؤاله "ما شعورك تجاه الذين عذبوك ؟ " توسعت حدقة عينه ، نزلت دمعته وأجاب : pic.twitter.com/lFgVi9N5oc

In 2020, despite warnings from loved ones, al-Hamada returned to Syria. He'd been given assurances from the Syrian government that he'd be safe, the Washington Post reported. Upon his arrival at Damascus airport, he was detained. His family did not see or hear from him again until Tuesday when they identified his body in a hospital morgue.

The United Nations estimates that 100,000 people went missing during Syria’s 14-year war, many of them forcibly disappeared or arbitrarily detained. Nearly half a million people were killed in the 13-year conflict, and up to 100,000 of those deaths occurred in government-run prisons, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Pictures of al-Hamada’s emaciated body, reportedly dumped at the Damascus hospital by officials from Saydnaya prison—nicknamed “the slaughterhouse”—surfaced on social media. Tens of thousands of Syrians are still searching for information about loved ones who disappeared under Assad’s rule.

Many have combed prisons and detention centers for clues. Several bodies have been found in morguesmega swerte, some bearing wounds consistent with torture. Meanwhile, the rebels and transitional government are urging the public to provide any information that might identify secret prisons.