It did not require much in Bashar al-Assad’s Syria to run into trouble with the secret police – and it always ended badly.

Mohammed Ismail al-Daher’s only crime was having the same name as a suspect wanted by the Palestine Branch, one of the most feared intelligence units in Assad’s entire security apparatus.

It did not seem to matter what he did, what records he kept to prove he was not that Ismail al-Daher, whoever he was, that he was merely a humble mechanic from Raqqa.

Eventually, he knew he would be stopped, either at a checkpoint or by a passing patrol, bundled into a vehicle at gunpoint and taken into custody. 

Then the torture would begin, first the beatings and later the cigarette burns that still cover much of his body.