Syrian goalie was an extremist to some and a cautionary tale to others
BEIRUT - He was a teenage goalie on Syria's national soccer team who gave up his athletic career to join the 2011 protests against Syrian President Bashar Assad's government.
His voice, heard in passionate paeans to the uprisings sweeping the country, earned him the nickname the Nightingale of the Revolution.
By the time Abdul Baset al-Sarout succumbed Saturday at age 27 to wounds sustained in battles in northwestern Syria, he had become a rebel commander, a revolutionary icon willing to work with anyone to destroy a government he despised. He had aimed to reverse the slow-motion defeat of the opposition under whose banner he fought and died.
Al-Sarout had also lost four brothers and several cousins and uncles in the fight against Assad, while surviving several assassination attempts. The war years had transformed him from a chanteur leading nonviolent Arab Spring-inspired rallies
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