He was detained during Ramadan. Eight days later, his family collected his body.

Crackdowns in Persian Gulf countries have chilled speech and limited the open-source evidence available to investigators tracking the conflict.

Sayed Mohammed Al-Mousawi disappeared in Bahrain after leaving a shisha cafe where he broke his Ramadan fast with his cousin and a friend. It was past midnight, in the early hours of March 19. Eight days later, his family received a call to collect his corpse.

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Images of Al-Mousawi’s body covered in bruises and lesions on his face, feet and torso filled social media feeds.

“The entire body, sir, cannot be described as intact,” a family member said in a statement to human rights investigators shared with NBC News. “It was severely disfigured.”