Khalid al-Hamad, left, in an undated photo that originally appeared on the website of the Syrian rebel group, the Independent Omar al-Farouk Brigade, which he commands.
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Al-Hamad never did swallow that piece of flesh. According to the fighter who smuggled the video out of Syria, the rebel commander spat it out off camera, much to the derision of his assembled audience. In the clip and in his interview with TIME, he describes the organ he bites as the soldier's liver, but a surgeon in New York who studied the video at TIME's request says it was the man's lung. Such finer points are not relevant, to al-Hamad or his supporters. To his enemies, the video will undoubtedly represent a challenge: Now that the taboo of cannibalism has been smashed, what can they do to top it? In Syria's spiralling madness, atrocity must be matched, and exceeded, by abomination. And above all, it must be captured on video for the world to see.