Friday
Mar162012
Syria 1st-Hand: How Abuse Created an Insurgent (Gunn)
Friday, March 16, 2012 at 11:09Raw footage from the battle for Idlib
Released after six days, Abu Youssef's feet were swollen "like footballs." The shoes he had been wearing when seized from outside his local mosque no longer fit.
Far from cowing him, the Assad regime had created another enemy. Within a week this soft-spoken, formerly apolitical construction foreman was organising Friday protests in his hometown of Darkush, just a few miles from the Turkish border.
Abu Youssef's activism continues to this day, even as the settlement of 17,000 people is encircled by Syrian tanks, the country's death toll rockets, and peaceful protests seem a relic of more innocent times.