Years of reporting on Syria, the road to Damascus and the fall of al-Assad

What returning to Syria in the midst of the euphoria and horror of uncovering the al-Assads’ mass graves felt like.

I’ve covered Syria for years, from the start – when anti-regime protests began in March 2011.

We were in Deraa, southern Syria. It was a Friday and people called it the “Day of Dignity”. They took to the streets to protest the deaths of dozens of people killed by security forces in previous days.

Demonstrations began because of the detention and torture of children for spray-painting anti-Assad graffiti on the wall of their school.

It was almost unthinkable in Syria – a tightly controlled country where people were afraid to utter any word against the regime.

Yet “enough is enough” was what I heard time and time again. Other words that people kept chanting were “justice and freedom”. The Arab Spring had reached Syria.