Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service studios in London.

I'm Tim Franks, and we're heading first to Syria and the funeral of a man whose activism,

whose incarceration and torture at the hands of the country's rulers,

whose haunted face and tear-streaming eyes

became a symbol of the utter degradation and cruelty of the Assad regime.

Mazan al-Hamada's body was found on Monday in the morgue of the Sadnaya Prison,

the prison that the Human Rights Group Afti International called a human slaughterhouse.

Footage posted online showed mourners today at Mazen's funeral.

The funeral chanters at that funeral for Mazen. His story had particular resonance across the world, not just because of the

level of violence he endured and the eloquence with which he told his story when he managed

to leave Syria, but then the fact that he returned to the country in 2020, despite the

immense risk. Before going back, one of the interviews Mazen had given was for the TV documentary,

Syria's disappeared.

He described an interrogation by security officers.

He said, what type of weapon did you have?

I told him a camera, impertinently.

I told him a Toshiba camera.

And I didn't carry weapons. I hate weapons.

And he told me, I don't want these confessions. Take him. You will confess. If you don't confess, we'll kill you. I told him, that's all I have.

Well, the director of that documentary was... I told him that's all I have. I told him.

I don't know. Hi, I think.

The director of that documentary was the filmmaker and journalist Sarah Afshar, and she joins me now.

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