Assad tortures children

Hamza al-Khateeb used to love it when the rains came to his small corner of southern Syria, filling up the farmers' irrigation channels enough so that he and the other children could jump in and swim.

But the drought of the last few years had left the 13-year-old without the fun of his favourite pool.
Instead, he'd taken to raising homing pigeons, standing on the roof of his family's simple breeze-block home, craning his neck back to see the birds circling above the wide horizon of fields, where wheat and tomatoes were grown from the tough, scrubby soils.

Though not from a wealthy family himself, Hamza was always aware of others less fortunate than himself, said a cousin who spoke to Al Jazeera.

"He would often ask his parents for money to give to the poor. I remember once he wanted to give  someone 100 Syrian Pounds ($2), and his family said it was too much. But Hamza said, 'I have a bed and food while that guy has nothing.' And so he persuaded his parents to give the poor man the 100."

In the hands of President Bashar al-Assad's security forces, however, Hamza found no such compassion, his humanity degraded to nothing more than a lump of flesh to beat, burn, torture and defile, until the screaming stopped at last.

Arrested during a protest in Saida, 10km east of Daraa, on April 29, Hamza's body was returned to his family on Tuesday 24th May, horribly mutilated.

The child had spent nearly a month in the custody of Syrian security, and when they finally returned his corpse it bore the scars of brutal torture: Lacerations, bruises and burns to his feet, elbows, face and knees, consistent with the use of electric shock devices and of being whipped with cable, both techniques of torture documented by Human Rights Watch as being used in Syrian prisons during the bloody three-month crackdown on protestors.

Hamza's eyes were swollen and black and there were identical bullet wounds where he had apparently been shot through both arms, the bullets tearing a hole in his sides and lodging in his belly.

On Hamza's chest was a deep, dark burn mark. His neck was broken and his penis cut off.

"Where are the human rights committees? Where is the International Criminal Court?" asks the voice of the man inspecting Hamza's body on a video uploaded to YouTube.

"A month had passed by with his family not knowing where he was, or if or when he would be released. He was released to his family as a corpse. Upon examining his body, the signs of torture are very clear.

Iran Increasing Support to Help Assad Kill His People

Just as the latest chilling reports of government crackdowns in Syria emerged -- today, a 12-year-old boy was reportedly killed by security forces and a 10-year-old arrested to punish his parents -- another report surfaced that Bashar Assad's buddies in Tehran are playing an "increasingly active" role in the violent crackdown on demonstrators. Reports the Guardian:

"A senior western diplomat in Damascus expanded upon assertions, first made by White House officials last month, that Iran is advising President Bashar al-Assad's government on how to crush dissent.

The diplomat pointed to a 'significant' increase in the number of Iranian personnel in the country since protests began in mid-March.

Mass arrests carried out by door-to-door raids, similar to those that helped to crush Iran's 'green revolution' in 2009, have been ramped up in the past week.

Human rights groups suggest more than 7,000 people have been detained in total since the uprising began. More than 800 people are said to have died, up to 50 of them during last Friday's 'day of defiance'. 'Tehran has upped the level of technical support and personnel support from the Iranian Republican Guard to strengthen Syria's ability to deal with protesters,' the senior western diplomat said, adding that the personnel were not involved in any physical operations on the ground and numbered in the few hundreds.

'Since the start of the uprising, the Iranian regime has been worried about losing its most important ally in the Arab world and important conduit for weapons to Hezbollah [in Lebanon],' the diplomat said."

Also among this weekend's casualties are four women who were killed when government forces opened fire on an all-female demonstration against the regime.

Britain is among the nations now trying to get the United Nations to refuse Syria a seat on the Human Rights Council, a denial that should be a no-brainer but the body doesn't exactly have a golden record of weeding out human-rights abusers from its ranks. A supporter of Syria's appointment? Bahrain, where the ruling regime has enjoyed its own brutal crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.

If anyone harbors any doubts about the murderous acts of the Assad regime, take a look at the numerous videos of the carnage shot by brave Syrians and uploaded to YouTube (such as this one of Dara'a crackdown -- warning, the footage is bloody and graphic). Look at what Bashar Assad does to his own people.