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.

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.”

The images ignited a torrent of confusion and outrage at Bahraini authorities and calls for an investigation. The exact circumstances around Al-Mousawi’s detention remain unclear, but his killing has become a flash point in a wider crackdown across the Persian Gulf in the shadow of the U.S.…