Protests spread across Syria 10 years ago Monday, on March 15, 2011. The regime of Bashar Assad responded to this peaceful uprising with gunfire, arbitrary detentions, and torture. Military units defected. Islamic extremists took up arms. A decade of civil war had begun.

On April 12, 2011, security forces arrested a 15-year-old protester named Omar Alshogre. They pulled out his fingernails and gave him electric shocks but released him after two days. The regime arrested Alshogre again in November 2012 when he was 17. They hung him from the ceiling with shackles. He confessed to crimes he never committed. Later, in a military intelligence prison, interrogators raped and tortured a woman in front of her two small children. Alshogre was also in the room, waiting to be questioned. When his turn came, the interrogators smashed his knees until he could no longer stand.