Syria

A Creative Commons leader who was active in projects like Firefox and Wikipedia, Bassel Khartabil played a pivotal role in extending online access in Syria. His wife, and the world, recently learned he was executed in 2015.

Mohamed Abazied, 40, lived in Daraa for six years prior to his death. His own home was destroyed in an airstrike last year.

The lead up to the Arab Spring was open season for surveillance companies — they provided technologies to eager government clients widely known to be publicly engaged in repression.

As Syrian government forces take control of Aleppo, press freedom groups call on all parties to protect the safety of media workers leaving the besieged city.

As Syrian government forces take control of Aleppo, press freedom groups call on all parties to protect the safety of media workers leaving the besieged city.

The prominent Syrian human rights defenders Razan Zaitouneh, Samira Al-Khalil, Wa’el Hamada and Nazim Hammadi remain missing three years after armed men abducted them.

The prominent Syrian human rights defenders Razan Zaitouneh, Samira Al-Khalil, Wa’el Hamada and Nazim Hammadi remain missing three years after armed men abducted them.

On July 13, Bashar el-Assad spoke with NBC News extensively on a variety of topics, including Colvin’s death in a rocket blast in Homs. He claimed that because Colvin had entered Syria illegally, she was “responsible of everything that befell her”. He also alleged that Colvin worked with terrorists.

A native of the suburbs of Aleppo, Ibrahim Al-Omar was working for Al-Jazeera Mubasher, an Arabic-language live news feed channel operated by Qatar-based Al-Jazeera Media Network. He was killed on 11 July while covering a Russian air strike on Tarmanin, a town near the northwestern city of Idlib.

The Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) filed a lawsuit in a federal court in Washington DC accusing President Bashar al-Assad’s government of deliberately murdering US reporter Marie Colvin in Syria in 2012.

Two gunmen riding a motorbike shot Ahmad Abd al-Qader, founder of the exiled Syrian news outlet Eye on the Homeland, three times on 12 June. The attack was the second against the journalist in three months.

Employed by Images Live, a British photo agency, Osama Jumaa was injured while covering a Syrian government artillery bombardment of the Aleppo residential neighbourhood of Al-Zebdyeh. He was inside an ambulance when it was itself hit by a shell that killed both him and the driver.

Housam Al-Mosilli, a respected writer, journalist, translator and researcher. He lived in Damascus at the start of the conflict, and following three arrests, detention and torture by the Syrian security forces for covering anti-government demonstrations; he fled the country in 2012. Mosilli talks to PEN about the life of a writer in exile, his new life and leaving Syria.

During the ten months they were held hostage, they were moved six times by their abductors. They were kept together for the first three months but then Pampliega was separated from the other two.

ARTA FM suffered a hard blow on 26 April after its director was ambushed, interrogated and threatened with death. Before making their escape, the masked gunmen responsible for his attack also set the radio station itself on fire and destroyed some of its equipment.

Since his detention, many human rights groups have campaigned for his release. On 21 April 2015, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared his detention a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and called for his release, yet the Syrian authorities refuse to free him.