Aziz is one of the most connected men in Turkey-the sort of guy whose cell phone has the numbers of the prime minister and the Cabinet and every taxi stand and liquor store. A Turk from Istanbul, Aziz is related by marriage to the last Ottoman sultan. Aziz, 57, is grizzled and handsome he loves women and they love him back. I sat behind Mustafa and next to my old friend Aziz Akyavas. His uncle was an officer who had defected from Assad’s army and risen to become a rebel leader. Mustafa had studied law at a university in Aleppo his wife was a doctor. His job was to connect Western journalists with rebel commanders inside Syria. In the passenger seat was a young man of slight build and gentle demeanor whom, for his safety, I’ll call Mustafa. I’d seen their videos on the Internet: shabiha henchmen decapitating rebels with chain saws and flaying them alive with telephone wires.Ībdelrazaq was driving his own car. Whenever gunmen sweep into rebel-held villages and execute families and burn their houses, the rebels blame the shabiha. Now they’re President Assad’s secret protectors. The shabiha ran drugs and women for the regime’s elites before the war. The rebels said Iran trained the most ruthless and lethal of Assad’s militias, the shabiha-the “shadow men.” They are tough guys who do the dirty jobs-the kidnapping and killing and torture. He said they were proof that Lebanese groups and the Iranian government were directly supporting President Bashar al-Assad and his death squads. Abdelrazaq wanted to show us his prize: four Iranian and two Lebanese fighters his men had captured. We divided our gear and the team between Taher’s minivan and Abdelrazaq’s car and set out. Abdelrazaq negotiated a price with a driver named Taher. There were always a lot of freelance drivers lingering for business at Bab al-Hawa. I have never liked big teams, but this was going to be an easy trip. We were traveling light for television reporters, but we still had computers and batteries and cameras and tapes and flak jackets and medical kits. He had a lot of different weaknesses in his motor system.Abdelrazaq told us there wasn’t enough room in his car for all our bags and all of us. He would shake a little bit," she recalled. Males are more likely to die from the illness. MECP2 is found on the X chromosome, according to the National Institutes of Health, which females have two of, so it's even rarer rare and more severe in males because they only have one X chromosome, explained Zoghbi. When Zoghbhi uncovered that Henry was the first person observed to have his particular mutation to the MECP2 gene, she needed to do more research, so she recommended Henry be seen at Texas Children’s Hospital, where doctors could treat and track his symptoms to see if they followed the usual path for Rett syndrome. Your heart goes out, and you want to do everything possible." ![]() "You see a child who is helpless and who is sweet, and he’s connecting with you, but he really is suffering from this disease. "You feel the pain of Rett syndrome, and I felt that pain with so many patients before him," she continued. "And you see him - how he's struggling to really do the best he can so he can move, so he can gain some strength to crawl or do something." "He has this smile that he looks at you - you'll see it in the pictures posted on the web - and naturally, you fall in love with him," she told TODAY. The Engels got in touch with Zoghbi, who’s been researching the disease for many years. After sequencing was performed on Henry, it was discovered that he had a mutation to the gene involved in Rett syndrome. Zoghbi first met Henry within his first year of life after Richard Engel and his wife, Mary, noticed their son wasn’t reaching usual motor milestones - the first sign of Rett syndrome for many children, according to the foundation. Zoghbi and Henry from a 2019 TODAY segment. She recalled that losing Henry was "one of the hardest days" for her and her research team. Henry's cells could also advance research for other neurological conditions, such as autism, Zoghbi said in a TODAY segment aired April 13.
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