He risked everything to stand up to Assad, but he never got to see the regime fall [Video]

Again and again, Mazen al-Hamada risked everything to help his fellow Syrians.

In the early days of the Arab Spring uprisings, he marched in the streets and called for the fall of President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime.

For that, he was repeatedly arrested and tortured in the country’s notorious prison system. 

He escaped to the Netherlands in 2013, and spent the next seven years speaking out about the horrors he had both witnessed and endured in prison, hoping to convince world leaders to bring Assad to justice. 

Finally, in 2020, he returned home in desperation hoping he could convince Syrian authorities to liberate those still trapped behind bars, including his own nephew. 

But he was detained immediately upon arrival at the airport in Damascus, and his loved ones never saw or heard from him again — until Tuesday, when his family identified his body in a hospital morgue.

On Thursday, …