I hope Assad pays the price, says mother whose son's death inflamed 2011 Syrian revolution
If the push to oust Bashar al-Assad was born anywhere, it was born in Deraa, a small city in Syria near the Jordanian border.
Here, on 21 May 2011, the tortured and mutilated body of 13-year-old Hamza al-Khatib was delivered to his family weeks after his arrest at an anti-government rally.
His death, and the torture of other local teenagers for writing anti-Assad graffiti, sparked widespread protests and a harsh crackdown by government forces.
If anyone in Deraa should be celebrating the fall of Assad's regime, it's the Khatib family.
But when we visited today, no one in that house was celebrating.
They had just been sent screenshots of documents found in the notorious Saydnaya prison confirming that Hamza's older brother Omar - also arrested by the police in 2019 - had died in custody.
The boys' mother, Samira, shaking with grief, told me she had been waiting for Omar to emerge from prison.
"I was thinking maybe he'll come today or tomorrow," she said. "Today, I got the news."
