The shooting of Hamza galvanises protestors

IBRAHIM AL-KHATIB knew that his country was enduring dark days. But he only realised quite how appalling things were when his 13-year-old nephew returned to the family home in a body bag, horrifically mutilated.

"God help Syria," he said, his voice a frightened whisper. "This is the only way peace will come and the country can start again."

The death of his nephew Hamza al-Khatib at the hands of the Syrian security forces has had a huge impact on a country already wracked by months of violent anti-government protests. Syrians may have become hardened to deaths and disappearances, but the fate of the round-faced adolescent has caused unprecedented revulsion, and turned the boy from a small town in southern Syria into the face of the nationwide uprising.

"He was an average, good looking guy," said Mr Khatib, who asked for his first name to be changed for his own safety, in an interview from another Arab state where he has since sought refuge. "The family is moderate and respected in the town. Hamza was in the seventh grade in a local school in Jiza. But he was captured, he was tortured by security forces. He was tortured to death."

Hamza's death has given protesters a figurehead for their anger - as in Egypt, where the brutal murder of computer programmer Khaled Saeed, 28, by policemen whom he filmed carrying out a drug deal sparked fury.

A Facebook page in his memory, "We are all Hamza al-Khatib" - echoing a tribute to Mr Saeed - already has 15,000 followers.

Captured on an anti-government activist's mobile phone, footage of Hamza's battered and bullet-ridden corpse has been broadcast around the world, despite the horrific injuries it shows. His family had scattered the body with rose petals as a burial ritual, making the image of the maimed flesh beneath all the more jarring.

His body was covered in bruises, and his hands smashed. His eyes were swollen and black, and his neck was broken. His genitals had been severed, and he had scars on his body that suggested whipping with a cable and electric shocks.

In the ensuing furore, the government insisted that the body had simply decomposed, and wheeled out a coroner to deny that the boy - who they described as being part of a crowd of "jihadist" rioters - had been tortured.

It did nothing to calm public fury, and last week's demonstrations were among the largest seen so far. The killing of children has caused outrage. An 11-year-old girl was reportedly killed in a military operation in the town of Hirak last week. One of the coordinators of the protests in Deraa said that one of Hamza's cousins was killed on Friday in Al-Raftan after being fired on by security forces.

"Security forces opened fire on this group and many children were injured, but the girl from the Khatib family died," he said.

Even in this turbulent region, Hamza was perhaps an unlikely political martyr. His uncle said he was a diligent student who enjoyed football and raised homing pigeons, climbing onto the flat roof of the family's small concrete home to watch his birds swoop and circle in the sky. When the rains came to Jiza, a farming town of 28,000 set amid the flat, flinty desert that borders Jordan, he loved to swim in the pools that sprung up around his home.

On the morning of April 29, Hamza had accompanied his family on a protest march, walking towards the town of Deraa 30 miles away, which has been a hotbed of anti-government unrest since February. The boy, by all accounts, went along happily, waving the Syrian flag and joining in chants for freedom.

However, by that time, the Syrian government was beginning to show far more steel in its resolve to stamp the protests out altogether. Earlier in the week, Deraa had been surrounded by troops of the feared 4th Brigade, controlled by President Bashar al-Assad's brother, Maher, who had cut off power supplies, blown up water tanks, and installed snipers to shoot at anyone venturing onto the streets.

It was into this tense situation that Hamza and his family marched, intending to break the siege by delivering food and supplies to residents. But as the group passed through the main street of the nearby town of Saida - a settlement that is home to many army officers - security forces opened fire, causing the marchers to flee in wild panic among the trees in the town. In the chaos, it seems, Hamza became separated from his family, and was then shot and wounded before being picked up state police.

His relatives searched for weeks, but failed to find him until eventually they learnt he was being held in a state prison. They then managed to visit him in prison, where he was seen alive and well, but when the family begged the guards to release him on the grounds of his age, their pleas for sympathy backfired.

"The security forces were angry at us, asking how we found out where Hamza was," one relative said in a television interview. "They were infuriated that we had found him. Then they tortured the poor boy for two days."

And so it was that when his father Ali arrived at the prison on May 21, he was told his son was not in custody but in the nearby hospital. Rather than being in a ward, however, he was in the morgue. Mr Khatib is reported to have fainted at the sight, while his mother is said to have had a nervous breakdown. Word of his torture soon spread to local activists, who filmed the boy's body along with an angry running commentary on his extensive injuries.

The scale of the subsequent outcry appears to have caught the Syrian goverment on the back foot, although it has since made apparently clumsy efforts at counter-propaganda.

State television did acknowledge the case, and in an unusual admission, conceded that he had died of gunshot wounds. But the government news agency, Sana, then published its own version of events, aimed at "closing the door in the face of the lies and false accounts". In terms which would be farcical, where they not speaking of such tragedy, the statement claimed that Hamza was not a 13-year-old but a "plump" 20-year-old troublemaker, who had been part of a heavily-armed crowd intent on attacking local security forces.

Coroner Akram al-Shaar was quoted as saying of Hamza's corpse: "There weren't any traces of violence, resistance or torture or any kinds of bruises, fractures, joint displacements or cuts."

The government news agency also said that Mr Assad had visited the family last week to offer his condolences. Hamza's father appeared on state television to praise the President's "gentle and kind" behaviour, adding that the Syrian leader had promised a package of reforms that would "serve the interests of the Syrian citizens."

Ibrahim Khatib, Hamza's uncle, told quite a different version of events. He claimed that Hamza's father had been forced to appear on television, and that the whole family were now terrified of further reprisals.

"I tried to talk to the family, but they have begged me not to call again," he said. "Their phones have been tapped and they are under surveillance 24 hours a day.

"Many members of the Khatib family have been captured by the police. I am strictly not going to talk about this matter any more because my phone could be tapped."

Hamza's death appears to have emboldened the protesters even further. On Friday, despite the government cutting off the internet to halt the spread of the revolt, record numbers of people took to the streets. An estimated 150,000 people gathered in the northern town of Maarat an-Numan, with a further 50,000 in Hama, central Syria. At least 63 were reported killed, making it the bloodiest single day since the uprising began.

Campaigners dubbed it "Children's Friday" in memory of Hamza and other youngsters killed in the demonstrations. His name was chanted in the streets, and his photo held aloft by protesters. The UN children's agency UNICEF claims that at least 30 children have been shot dead so far, with around 1,100 people killed in total and more than 10,000 detained.

"Syria is sliding down a tunnel. We are at the edge of the abyss," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Syria's opposition, fragmented by years of sectarian and ideological tensions, made tentative steps on Thursday to organise and show an international face, calling on Mr Assad to step down to allow for free elections at the end of a two-day conference in Turkey.

Murhaf Jouejati, a political science professor at George Washington University who specialises in Syria, said the conference was an attempt to "put together a vision of what a post-Assad Syria will look like." But Mr Assad shows no sign of relenting.

Indeed, the prominence of a dead child in the pro-democracy campaign may also prove uncomfortable for President Assad's London-born wife, Asma, who is patron of several Syrian children's charities and a noted supporter of gradual reform within the country. The mother-of-three has publicly dedicated herself to helping the rural poor and disfranchised, and so the death of Hamza - the son of a labourer from a small town - is yet another blow to her credibility. Since the start of the uprising two months ago, she has all but disappeared from public view.

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, showed no such reticence last week. Warning that Hamza's death demonstrated a "total collapse" of the Syrian government's willingness to listen to its people, she said: "I can only hope that this child did not die in vain."

The Sunday Telegraph, London