Testimony to an Atrocity

"I went out on my balcony. I said to his father, they are going to shoot your son! Come! Come! Come!
"I was on the stairs when I heard the first shot, I was at the door when I heard the second shot.
"I saw the third shot. I was shouting, 'That's haram, forbidden! Stop! Stop! You're killing a child'. But they just gave me a dirty look and got into their car. As they went, they drove over my son's arm as he lay there dying."
Nadia Umm Fuad, Aleppo, Syria

Nadia Umm Fuad who watched her son being shot by Islamist rebels in Syria after the 14-year-old referred to the Prophet Mohammed as he joked with a customer at his coffee stall Photo: Will Wintercross

 

In Syria, at the start of the protests that began peacefully, when Sunni Syrians tried to convey to their tyrannical ruler that they would very much appreciate equality with Shia Syrians, as citizens of the country, they had hope. This was at a time when the fever of the "Arab Spring" was infecting various countries of the Middle East and North Africa. It was a time when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad assured his-then collegial Western interlocutors that all Syrians loved him and would never stage a revolt to unseat him.

And then a handful of schoolchildren in Aleppo, teens who were infected by the disaffection of their parents' generation of Sunnis, spray-painted anti-regime slogans on the walls of their school. Some of them were taken into custody. They were tortured. In southern Syria in Deraa, a 13-year-old boy, Hamaza al-Khatib, had also been taken into custody by regime troops. He was later returned to his parents. The boy had three gunshot wounds, his genitals had been mutilated, his kneecaps smashed, he was burned.

This was early in the uprising, informing Sunni protesters what they were up against, and hardening their resolve to continue protesting against the atrocities of the regime. To fight for what they believed in, that as citizens of Syria they sought respect, equality, and a more democratic state. They are still fighting. And the Syrian Free Army representing most of the rebels have been joined by less secular Sunnis. Some, in fact, known of a certainty to be hard-core, vicious Islamists.

Nadia Umm Fuad's son Mohammed Katta had been minding his family's coffee stall. A customer wanted to have his coffee then and there, and he would pay later. Mohammed responded that "I wouldn't give the Prophet Muhammad credit if he came here today", playfully. He was overheard by two men who approached and hauled him off in a car. The boy protested his love of the Prophet. A militiaman from the FSA protested on the boy's behalf, to no avail.

Soon afterward they returned. Mohammed's younger brother saw his brother staggering, falling to his knees, badly beaten, with a bag over his head. "I heard them say, 'People of Aleppo and people of Shaar! Anyone who curses God is given three days to repent. Anyone who curses the Prophet is killed immediately", recounted Nadia Umm Fuad.

Jabhat al-Nusra denies it was responsible for the killing of 14-year-old Mohammad. But the brutal Islamic State of Iraq terrorists are present now as well in the country, fighting as jihadist Sunnis for the liberation of Syria from Alawite rule, and the installation of Sharia law. Nadia Umm Fuad is convinced foreign fighters killed her son; their dialect was not of the district.

"We didn't have any problems when the FSA controlled Aleppo. There are so many groups now, that we don't know who is in charge", lamented the grieving mother.