Famed torture victim Mazen Al-Hamada returns to Syria

(Zaman Al Wasl)- Opposition activists said the circumstances behind the return of the famed torture victim Mazen Al-Hamada from Netherlands to Damascus is complicated due to the financial and psychological pressures and the forgiveness vows by the Syrian regime.

Zaman al-Wasl sources revealed that Al-Hamada’s return has been a process that started in the end of 2018 when he visited the regime’s embassy in Berlin asking to go back as a Syrian citizen but they insisted that a settlement must be made for him to be able to return.

He then visited the embassy 2 more times, the last of which was when he stayed for a week in Berlin before boarding a plane to Beirut and then to Damascus.

During the past few years, Al-Hamada talked about the problems he encountered on his personal page, including his continuously declining bank account balance and the several other violations, which exhausted him and at times pushed him to call on the Dutch government to return him to Syria.

The sources suggested that Al-Hamada must have suffered a psychological trauma in the Netherlands which accumulated on his previous trauma from detention experience in Assad’s prisons. The “shock”, however, is not because of the Dutch government, but rather due to his expectations to be treated differently from any other refugee.

Al Hamada’s need for preferential treatment, increased by the spotlights that the media and human rights organizations have shed on him, led him to believe that he is somehow the center of the Syrian issue, especially after he was hosted by the US.

Al Hamada’s ego inflation has become clear in his speech, saying that he was the one who stopped the regime's bombing of Deir Ezzour, and that the coalition will use his expertise to manage the oil fields in eastern Syria.

The sources indicated that the former detainee’s psychological and financial crises pushed and accelerated his return to the regime, with the regime’s mediators in Mohassan city embellishing his return to his executioner.

Al-Hamada was one of the most prominent and significant Syrian detainees who documented by video their testimony about Assad’s prisons, speaking boldly and clearly about the sexual torture against detainees as well as summary executions in the Mezzeh Military Hospital in Damascus.