Bashar al-Assad By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44378508 | Vladimir Putiin By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60759727 | Ali Khameini By Tasnim News Agency, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57953266

Related Reference

Asher-Schapiro, Avi.  “The Young Men Who Started Syria’s Revolution Speak About Where It All Began.”  VICE News, March 15, 2016:

Omar first heard about the graffiti at morning recess. It was winter, he was 14, in the middle of 10th grade, and his friends said it was just a prank. The day before, just after school, a handful of Omar’s classmates found some red paint and scrawled, “Your turn doctor,” on the school’s wall. Under most circumstances, in most places, such behavior might provoke a slap on the wrist — perhaps a stern visit from the police. But in Daraa, Syria, in February 2011, those words could get you killed.

Macleod, Hugh.  “How schoolboys began the Syrian revolution.”  CBS News / Global Post, April 26, 2011:

The local secret police soon arrested 15 boys between the ages of 10 and 15, detaining them under the control of Gen. Atef Najeeb, a cousin of President Bashar al-Assad.

In a gloomy interrogation room the children were beaten and bloodied, burned and had their fingernails pulled out by grown men working for a regime whose unchecked brutality appears increasingly to be sowing the seeds of its undoing.

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