Some Different Opinions on the Return of Mazen al-Hamada

March 4, 2020

As refugees from Syria continue to make big news in different ways, most have ignored the odd story of one former refugee who just went back to Syria to face arrest - voluntarily, it seems but under murky and slightly disputed circumstances. The former prisoner who was willing to go back is Mazen al-Hamada (Hummada, etc. - Ar: مازن الحمادة ) I've written about this guy previously as a star witness for Ben Taub, later for Sarah Ashfar, and others covering the co-mingled allegations dubbed "Assad Files" * and "Caesar Photos." **
https://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2016/04/witness-assessment-mazen-hamada.html
* http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2014/11/fail-caesar-exposing-anti-syria-photo.html
** http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2016/04/regarding-those-assad-files.html
** https://21stcenturywire.com/2018/10/11/revolution-unraveled-assad-files-now-an-achilles-heel-for-war-crimes-narrative/

Hamada (reportedly an oilfield worker with Schlumberger) was one of those who filled in the blanks - and there are huge blanks in the touted primary evidence. He claims to have been Air Force Intelligence prisoner #1858, arrested for tying to smuggle infant formula to the besieged people of Daraya (he was from Deir Ezzour, clear across the country, and … infant formula?) He says he was entrapped into even tying that, and was arrested with a nephew in a devious sting, both threatened with death and tortured. Mazen says he witnesses several deaths and killings just like the kinds in the Caesar photos, with numerous random slayings by one guard called "Azrael."

But then Hamada says a judge ordered his release in 2013 when he saw torture scars, which might go to show how "systematic" this torture was. He had to leave his nephew behind, and the poor alleged guy could hardly have survived long. Mazen fled to the Netherlands and started lodging these claims, with great conviction and easily-tapped emotion, and others in the media amplified that signal with apparently zero thought as to its truthfulness. There are apparently official records showing his detention, but then they give the arrest as 15 months later than in his own story, and we're to believe him where he clashes with the supporting evidence? Well, I didn't. I bet all the terrible details he saw were during the disputed 15 months when he probably was NOT in jail with his nephew over smuggling baby formula. 

A semi-iconic image:

I always thought he had an odd look, like a sleep-deprived Indonesian man, or something. Note the only described torture in the prior repots (that I noted) was cigarette burns on his legs. The info I'm seeing is clear he's been "taking drugs" - some kind of heavy downers, I suppose. It's said he picked this up in the Netherlands to deal with the trauma of his torture and subsequent social dislocation. No one suggests this goes back to his infant formula days and prison time, and his flight to Europe and his first reporting of crimes. See his apparent chain smoking and superb calm in this video of his understanding of Kurdish history. I could see this guy having burns on his legs, cuts on his arms, needle tracks, and clearly some kind of scars on his mind and soul, some of it preceding jail, and none it coming from regime torturers. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x8WAe5Lgao

I can also see his jailers torturing him for some reason they might have, likely a good one. I'm not ruling that out. But most of his details seem completely fabricated and far out of step with the illustrated reality of official orders and responses as seen in all discovered internal reports.
  
Most of these sources are auto-translated, primarily from Arabic. Few European and fewer English-language agencies have reported on this ambiguous story. All are from the second half of February and forward.
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Petra Vissers
Where is Mazen Hamada? The Syrian activist disappeared from the Netherlands a month ago and popped up in Damascus. Friends and family are seriously worried. "" This proves that Assad's long arm is back, and very active. " #mazenhamada
https://twitter.com/PVissers/status/1234396603840126976

Suhair Atassi
Let us not forget the case of Mazen al-Hamada: Victim: the Assad regime, despair and loneliness in Europe, luring the regime to him after Mazen found in the drug a way to forget, using only the path of the detainees ’important testimonies, but without following up with their psychological situation .. Mazen may not be the last with The effects of the Caesar’s Law begin on the butcher.
https://twitter.com/suhairatassi/status/1234072241647865857

George Sabra:
Mazen Al-Hamadeh has always been missing behind bars, and we know which ordeal he faces with his arrested colleagues. We miss him today with more pain, because he faces the ordeal alone with a tired body and a spirit that has been thickened by the regime's obedience.
 Freedom deserves the effort of those fighting for it.
https://twitter.com/GeorgeSabra_sy/status/1232704865320783872

Ahmed Naji
On the return of Mazen al-Hamada, or his suicide in this manner, is the tragic expression of the tragedy of these survivors, and we may witness other shocking expressions that may not be like his return
https://twitter.com/AhmedNajiTW/status/1232776979843186688
(links to...)
https://www.almodon.com/opinion/2020/2/25/إنتحار-معتقل-سابق
article including this unexplained photo of what looks like Mr. Hamada, but older and heavier, sitting in what looks like a jail cell.

It is not news of the "voluntary" return of a former detainee to Damascus Airport, to be arrested again upon his arrival. According to what was reported by the "Zaman Al-Wasl" website, former detainee Mazen Al-Hamada returned to Damascus airport from Berlin last Saturday, after contacting the Assad embassy there, to arrive at night and be taken immediately to an unknown destination. Mazen al-Hamada had appeared on many occasions to expose the torture practiced on detainees in Syria, including human rights and parliamentary bodies, and he is one of the survivors of the fate of the detainees who died under torture within what became known as the Caesar file.

There is no information yet about the details of what happened, except for the affirmation of those who know them "through their pages on social media" that he was not balanced in the recent period, especially, and he was taking drugs because of his severe psychological crisis. Regardless of the negativity that the drug abuse issue might raise among some, what is certain is that the aforementioned was not in a state of equilibrium that would qualify him to make a rational decision, and it is clear that one of Assad's agents in Europe has caught a valuable catch and was able to influence him in some way to bring him back to this As.

"It is expected that Assad's intelligence services will exploit Mazen's return," article continues, put him on TV to recant his earlier claims, and then they would likely kill him. But then, the author admits it's not clear even if he was forced back into jail, and it seemed not: a suicidal impulse was likely at work.

Perhaps the best characterization of Mazen's return decision is that at some degree of consciousness, or subconscious, he decided to commit suicide. He does not belong to a class of the opposition that falls under the temptation of power to seek a desire for gain, and his memory and body are well preserved with the effects of previous torture, so that he is not deluded by a different reception. He has lost family members under torture, and he knows that his deliverance from the same fate only came about by chance, and that delivering from these monsters is not written to a person twice. However, he probably was not able to commit suicide in the Netherlands, where he was staying, unable to understand his desire and implement it on his own, and he found in his old executioner the perfect tool for tragic suicide without taking care of its dimensions that exceed what is personal.

Those are some pretty deep thoughts that make you just hate Assad for so ingeniously warping people.

Informed sources. The complex circumstances of the return of the refugee who spoke openly of "al-Khazuk" in Assad's detention camps
https://www.zamanalwsl.net/news/article/121360/

Sources close to the case of former detainee "Mazen al-Hammada" said that the return of the man to the lap of the regime recently is complex and intertwined circumstances, interspersed with material difficulties and psychological pressures as well as temptations presented by the regime through intermediaries.
These sources stressed that the process of returning "al-Hammada" is not the beginning of the hour as many who are not familiar with the status of the man who was a refugee in the Netherlands years ago, but it is a process that began almost since the end of 2018, when al-Hammada reviewed the embassy of the regime in Berlin, asking them to return as a "Syrian citizen" and But they insisted that his situation be "settled" so that he could return.

Al-Hammada visited the regime's embassy in Berlin again, and then a third time, the last time he stayed in Berlin for nearly a week, before boarding a plane to Beirut and then to Damascus.
All of this was preceded by a rumor that he was returning to Syria, which prompted Al-Hammada to appear in a live broadcast denying the rumor, but at the same time he wondered what the surprise of this rumor if true, he is in the end a Syrian citizen and has the right to return to Syria.
The sources reported that during the past years he was talking about the difficulties and problems he encounters publicly through his profile, including the decrease in the balance in his account and the flow of irregularities on him, which strained him financially, and sometimes pushed him to attack the Dutch government calling on him to return him to Syria.
The sources suggested that the "hamda" was subjected in the Netherlands to a psychological trauma added to the trauma he had previously received from the experience of his bitter detention in Assad's prisons, and this "Dutch" shock, so to speak, is not the work of the government, but is the result of the imagination of "al-Hammada" to receive preferential treatment that distinguishes him from the rest of the Refugees, in fact, are known to be treated equally in the Netherlands and across Europe, particularly financially.
Al-Hammada's sense of alienation and need for preferential treatment seems to have been further highlighted by the media and human rights organizations, even as he imagined that he was at the centre of the Syrian issue, especially after he was hosted in the United States.
In all, al-Hammada's image has clearly swelled, and he does not hesitate to broadcast this inflation in his speech, such as his talk that he is the one who stopped the regime's bombing of Deir ez-Zor, and that the coalition will use his expertise to manage the oil fields in eastern Syria.
The sources pointed out that the crisis of the psychological and financial "al-Hammada" was a major impetus in his return to the regime, and supported it and apparently accelerated it, and the authorities of officers from the city of "Mohassan" who are still serving in the army of the regime, who decorated the former detainee returning to his executioner.
Al-Hammada was one of the most prominent and most important Syrian detainees who trusted the voice and image of their testimonies about the detention in Assad's cells, where he spoke boldly and clearly about sexual torture and rape by al-Khazuk, as well as the killings and liquidations at the Al-Mazzah military hospital.

Alaa Ghazal
https://www.facebook.com/1175259951/posts/10218440477141305/?d=n
I'm avoiding talking about #mazen _ Hamada
But there are things in my opinion that can't be overlooked
After the video "Abu Jafar Sifter" (...) a friend and close to him, he started using the term that the Syrian regime kidnapped mazen from Germany to Damascus!!
Away from my opinion with his balance, his statements, his actions, his mental state and his return to Syria...
But the conversion of mazen to kidnapped! This is denied!. Denied to fake things by turning "any opposition / opposition" to a victim!!
We have seen a lot of things and we have lost our credibility in a lot of topics …
"...about the kidnapping in which abu jafar came out with the video and got it! With the same video says Abu Jafar
Minute 9:17: Mazen came to me and said I want to go down to Syria, the opposition is dirty.. I told him that the regime will throw you if you come back.. then convinced
Minute 9:50: when he came back from America He came back to tell me that the Dutch are not giving me a visa to enter Syria I told him baby you are a political refugee The Dutch State cannot give you approval to go down to Syria and you are wanted in Syria
Minute 15:07: I have evidence and evidence that "Mazen" has made a lot of requests to the refugee assistance office in the Netherlands that he wants to come down to Syria and refuse.. and the people who are around him know this topic exactly that they rejected the first time And the second time and the third time and even try "Mazen" to work and communicate with the red cross, red crescent and blackhead we, Syria is an internationally known country that it is not safe, we are selling you as a refugee and you have a Dutch residence
Minute 16:57: why are you going down on deir EZ-Zor? He said I have a political solution I want to offer to the system and stop killing and beating
Minute 18:17: Mazen is a sick person and the patient is possible in two words to laugh at him like the embassy laughed at him and pulled him and kidnapped him. So Mazen was kidnapped and not mazen will be on Syria
Minute 07:44 Mazen from Berlin Airport: I'm going down on Syria

Mzahem_Alsaloum
The [confirmed] info so far, that Mazen Humada calls his natives and told them that he arrives to Damascus, but nothing proves that except his appearance. Mazen attacks me a lot before, but I feel bad and sad for him, he have had deal with his psychological situation by taking..2.
https://twitter.com/Mzahem_Alsaloum/status/1231662791133626368

..2.taking drugs, which the worse way to handle such a situation, I feel very unfortunate for him, and I hope nothing bad would happens to him, and he will be able to find the peace even if it was at the regime held.
#Syria
@SaraAfshar
@1962Wren
https://twitter.com/Mzahem_Alsaloum/status/1231662796443734016


Background videos (just found on the way)

https://twitter.com/ayoubi31/status/1232040450858635265
This is # Mazen Al Hamada, and he incites the Kurds on Al Jazeera previously

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x8WAe5Lgao
The full video of a Syrian opposition figure Mazen Hamadeh on the history of the Kurds 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKFMM7WzZO0
Mazen al-Hamada and the meeting with Musa Al-Omar, was he seconded in favor of the regime in the West and what is the secret of returning to the bosom of the homeland?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z_DzVxnRqk
2015 A message from the heart to the detainee released from the prisons of Al-Assad, the free Mazen Al-Hamada