The Honor of Companionship with Abu Osama, Ahmed Baker (Hazeem), may God have mercy on him
On the morning of the twenty-second of Rabi’ al-Awwal 1447 AH, corresponding to the fourteenth of September 2025 AD, at the age of eighty-seven, Ahmed Baker (Hazeem), one of the first generation in Hizb ut-Tahrir, passed away to his Lord. He carried the call for many years and endured long imprisonment and severe torture for its sake, but he did not falter, weaken, change, or alter, thanks to God's grace and help.
He spent long years in Syria in the eighties during the rule of the late Hafez, in hiding, until he was arrested with a group of Hizb ut-Tahrir youth by the Air Force Intelligence in 1991, to face the most severe forms of torture under the supervision of the criminals Ali Mamlouk and Jamil Hassan, where one of those who entered the interrogation room after a round of interrogation with Abu Osama and some of his comrades told me that he saw some pieces of flesh flying and blood on the walls of the interrogation room.
After more than a year in the cells of the Air Force Intelligence Branch in Mezzeh, he was transferred with the rest of his colleagues to Sednaya prison to be sentenced to ten years, of which he spent seven years patiently and expectantly, then God bestowed upon him relief.
After his release from prison, he continued to carry the call directly and continued until the arrests of the party's youth began, which included hundreds in Syria in the middle of December 1999, where his house in Beirut was raided and he was kidnapped to be transferred to the Air Force Intelligence Branch at Mezzeh Airport, to begin a new phase of terrible torture. Despite his old age, he was, with God's help, patient, steadfast, and expectant.
After nearly a year, he was transferred to Sednaya prison again, to be tried in the State Security Court, and later sentenced to ten years, of which God decreed that he spend nearly eight years, then God bestowed upon him relief.
I spent a full year with him in 2001 in Sednaya prison, but I was right next to him in the fifth dormitory (A) on the left of the third floor, I used to call him my dear uncle.
We used to eat together, sleep next to each other, and study culture and ideas. From him we gained culture and from him we learned patience and steadfastness.
He was tolerant, loved people, and was keen on the youth, instilling in them confidence in victory and the imminence of the fulfillment of God's promise.
He was a memorizer of the Book of God and he used to read it every day and night and he used to spend most of the night in prayer, and when dawn approached, he would shake me to wake me up for the night prayer and then for the dawn prayer.
I left prison and then returned to it in 2004, and we were transferred to Sednaya prison again in early 2005, to meet again with those who remained in prison when we left for the first time at the end of 2001, and among them was the dear uncle Abu Osama Ahmed Baker (Hazeem), may God have mercy on him.
We used to walk for long periods in front of the dormitories to forget with him the walls of the prison, the iron bars, and the separation from family and loved ones, how not, when he spent long years in prison and suffered what he suffered!
Despite my closeness to him and my companionship with him for long periods, I never saw him complain or grumble, as if he were not in prison, but soaring outside the walls of the prison; soaring with the Qur’an that he recites in most of his times, soaring with the wings of confidence in God’s promise and the glad tidings of His Messenger ﷺ of victory and empowerment.
We were in the darkest and most severe circumstances looking forward to the day of the great victory, the day when the glad tidings of our Messenger ﷺ are fulfilled "Then there will be a Khilafah according to the method of Prophethood." We longed to gather under the shade of the Khilafah and the banner of the Eagle fluttering. But God decreed that you move from the abode of misery to the abode of eternity and permanence.
We ask God to be in the highest Paradise and we do not purify anyone before God.
Our dear uncle, Abu Osama:
We ask God to cover you with His vast mercy, to dwell you in His spacious gardens, to make you with the righteous and the martyrs, and to reward you for the harm and torment you have suffered with the highest degrees in Paradise, and we ask Him, the Almighty, to gather us with you at the Cistern with our Messenger ﷺ and in a permanent abode of His mercy.
Our consolation is that you are arriving to the Most Merciful of the merciful, and we say only what pleases God, Indeed, we belong to God, and indeed, to Him we will return.
Written for the Media Office of Hizb ut-Tahrir
Abu Sateef Jijo