Hamza al-Khatib used to be 13 years frail when his tortured and mutilated physique used to be delivered to his family weeks after he used to be taken and arrested in an anti-authorities rally.
His demise along with the torture of alternative native youngsters for growing anti-Assad graffiti used to be the spark that created the mass express and ensuing authorities crackdown in 2011, says the BBC.
So if the inch to oust Bashar al-Assad used to be born anyplace, it used to be born in Deraa, Hamza’s fatherland and a exiguous metropolis in Syria shut to the Jordanian border.
If someone in Deraa must be celebrating the autumn of Assad’s regime, it’s the Khatib family.
But when we visited at this time time, no person in that home used to be celebrating.
They’d factual been despatched screenshots of documents came all over in the infamous Saydnaya detention middle confirming that Hamza’s older brother Omar – moreover arrested by the police in 2019 – had died in custody.
The boys’ mother, Samira, shaking with distress, educated me she had been looking out forward to Omar to emerge from detention middle.
“I used to be pondering maybe he’ll advance at this time time or the next day,” she mentioned. “Nowadays, I received the solutions.”
Dressed all in dim, and already mourning her husband, who died no longer as much as three months ago, she requested for pale President Bashar al-Assad himself to ride what she had lived thru.
“I hope he’ll pay the cost,” she mentioned. “And that God will seize revenge on him, and on his youngsters.”
Her nephew, Hossam al-Khatib, mentioned the documents had been published on social media, by of us scouring Saydnaya for files on their family. They came all over Omar’s file and shared it on-line, radiant that he used to be Hamza’s brother.
The autumn of Assad has lifted the lid on a protracted time of repression in Syria, and a ways of Deraa used to be out on the streets on Sunday, giddy with freedom, as rebellion opponents took the capital Damascus and Assad fled.
Cell phone pictures reveals crowds of fellows working around Deraa’s central square in a chaotic outpouring of joy – shouting and firing weapons into the air.
This case used to be a key opposition heartland throughout the Assad regime – heavy battles are etched onto colleges and properties right here, village after village corroded by tank rounds and machine gun fire.
The opposition in this southern fraction of Syria is thoroughly different to the alliance led by Islamist militant team Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which swept down from the north and took the capital final week. But they both converged on the capital on Sunday.
The Free Syria Navy (FSA) began combating right here in 2011, when the cruel authorities crackdowns following Hamza’s demise convinced some serving officers in Assad’s navy to defect and compose a rebellion force.
One in every of them used to be Ahmed al-Awda, a poet who studied English literature at university old to changing into an navy officer, and then a rebellion chief – now the militia chief of Deraa Province.
“You can no longer imagine how chuffed we’re,” he educated me in the nearby metropolis of Busra. “We had been crying for days. You can no longer imagine what we feel. All americans right here in Syria lost family. All americans used to be struggling.”
Mr Awda mentioned he used to be among the first to enter Damascus on Sunday, along with HTS. The key thing he did, he added, used to be to transfer to the embassies and authorities buildings, to guard the of us interior.
“We took many of the civilian authorities guys to the Four Seasons resort, and assign a genuinely huge force there to guard them,” he mentioned.
“You recognize this would also be a angry time, so I did my only to guard everybody there, even the authorities guys. I manufacture no longer are looking out to punish them, they’re Syrian.”
But he says he’ll no longer forgive Assad so with out disclose.
“I will enact my only to lift him to judgement in courtroom, to seize his punishment, because we are able to no longer neglect what he did to the Syrian of us, and the method in which he destroyed Syria.”
Assad’s departure has bestowed a fragile unity on Syria and its diverse opposition forces. But they no longer own a fundamental enemy, and with exterior powers composed invested right here, their variations can also advance below stress.
There are concerns that Syria can also educate the trudge of Iraq and Libya and splinter into chaos.
“We noticed what occurred in Iraq and we refuse it,” Mr Awda mentioned.
Assad’s forces weren’t the one ones he used to be combating right here in all places in the final few years. Islamic Deliver (IS) team cells – composed scattered in all places in the east of the country – had been moreover a possibility.
Mr Awda says he fought against them, killing a senior IS chief, Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi, two years ago.
Now Assad’s highly effective backers, Iran and Russia, are no longer any longer performing as a brake on IS, many right here are apprehensive a pair of resurgence.
Mr Awda is adamant this would per chance no longer happen. “No,” he insisted. “I kicked them out. We did no longer push Assad out only to are living below IS.”
Now he needs free elections, believing that the Syrian of us will never but again make a selection someone who would change into a dictator.
In Deraa’s cemetery, the plaque on Hamza’s grave lies in devices – broken by a authorities tank shell throughout combating with rebellion forces right here, the family mentioned.
“They kept hitting him even when he used to be lifeless,” one cousin remarked.
Neighbours watched in silence as the Syrian opposition flag used to be tied around Hamza’s gravestone.
Behind it, the graves explain a yarn of 13 years of combating: an air strike, a battle, a complete family killed of their home.
The battle with Assad has ended – but peace in Syria has no longer but been won.
