| Title | Organizations Fear for the Safety of Imprisoned Technologist in Syria | |
| Date | Friday October 09 2015, @10:27PM | |
| Author | n1 | |
| Topic | ||
| from the dept. | ||
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and 28 other organizations have issued a joint press release calling for the Syrian government to reveal the whereabouts of imprisoned technologist, open source developer, and "free culture advocate" Bassel Khartabil. EFF had reported on Wednesday that military police with a "top secret" sealed order moved Bassel and a cellmate from the Adra civilian jail to an undisclosed location.
Bassel "Safadi" Khartabil is one of five individuals and cases currently listed in EFF's "Offline: Imprisoned and Censored Around the World" campaign:
In 2011, after the protests began in Syria, Palestinian-Syrian software developer Bassel (Safadi) Khartabil kept the world updated on unjust arrests occurring in the country. He worked with his global contacts in the information technology world, including EFF activists, to disseminate information to Syrian contacts on how to stay safer online.
Bassel had long been a key figure in the Syrian tech community. He co-founded Aiki Lab, a hackerspace in Damascus, led the Creative Commons Syria project, and regularly contributed code and content to Mozilla, Wikipedia, the Openfontlibrary, and the Openclipart Library.
As the situation in Syria grew more unstable, Bassel saw more of his friends arrested. In March of 2012, his worldwide community of friends began to worry when Bassel's own online voice went silent. Unbeknown to his family and friends, on March 15, 2012, Bassel was arrested in the Mazzeh district of Damascus. It wasn't until July 2012 that his supporters discovered—thanks to former detainees at Kfar Souseh—that he was being held at the General Intelligence Directorate there.
In October 2012, Amnesty International confirmed that Bassel was being held at Kafr Souseh, relaying fears for his safety amidst local claims of torture. In response to this information, many groups and individuals called for Bassel's immediate release and championed his case via FreeBassel.org, a campaign run by a coalition of his friends and supporters.
Bassel was eventually charged in December 2012 with "spying for an enemy state." As members of the European Parliament, Charles Tannock and Ana Gomes, noted in their 2013 address to the European Commission on behalf of Bassel, "it is strongly suspected that his arrest was part of an effort to restrict access to online communities and discourses and stifle free expression in Syria." It was Bassel's visibility as a technologist and activist that made him a target for detention.
The press release was also made available in Arabic, French, and Spanish.
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