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Hamza al-Khateeb was kidnapped from the streets of Saida in Syria on April 29th. The boy was attending an anti-regime demonstration when he was seized by members of Bashar al-Assad's secret terror squad.  Nearly a month later, on May 24, his family received his mutilated corpse. He was tortured to death.
 
Here is how Al Jazeera English described the child's brutalised body:

[He had] 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 [...] 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. 

I read the above lines and failed to comprehend the totality of the horror and violence perpetrated against Hamza. Gradually, a picture began to form in my mind. Here was a child, torn from his family and plunged into the darkest recesses of Assad's despotic state. Grown men - adults - separated him from everything sacred to him; his mother, his father, his home and routine. 
 
I try to imagine his blinding terror - the kind that arrests your heart and mind -... >>>