A surgeon who was found dead in a Syrian prison was unlawfully killed, a jury has found.

Dr Abbas Khan, 32, travelled to the war-torn country to work at a hospital treating bombing victims, but was arrested within 48 hours of entering the country in November 2012.

The father-of-two, from Streatham, was a research fellow at the Elective Orthopaedic Centre (EOC) at Epsom Hospital between August 2011 and January 2012.

At the end of an inquest into his death, which started two weeks ago at the Royal Courts of Justice, the forewoman of the jury said that Dr Khan was deliberately and intentionally killed without any legal justification.

The jury said the cause of the doctor’s death was unascertained.

Dr Khan was tortured and beaten by interrogators and held in captivity until his death on December 16 last year.

The Syrian regime claim he hanged himself in his cell, but his family have always been adamant that he was murdered.

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Last week, the inquest heard how Dr Khan’s mother Fatima Mahmood, from Mitcham, went alone to Damascus to find her son in July last year after eight months of tirelessly contacting different embassies, the Foreign Office and human rights organisations to no avail.

In Syria, she visited foreign embassies, government ministries and even prisons.

On July 24, she took a taxi to a prison where, unknown to her, Dr Khan was incarcerated.

The guards said they could not confirm whether he was held there.

Finally on August 1, she got to see Dr Khan at the Court of Terrorism.

She said he was a "skeleton" with black marks on his hands - as though he had received electric shocks - and his feet were burnt.

She said: "I threw myself at the judge’s feet and said ‘Sir please, please have mercy on my son, please release him’."

Shortly afterwards he was moved from the notorious Far’ Falastin prison to Adra prison, where conditions were better, but he was found dead last December, just three days before his promised release.