2 July 2021
A 34-year-old queer Syrian speaks for the first time about his imprisonment under both the Assad regime and ISIS; experiences which nearly killed him, as they did several of his friends.
Disappeared
Wejdan Nassif, a friend and former cellmate of Samira al-Khalil, the Syrian democracy activist imprisoned by Hafez al-Assad and then abducted by Islamists, recalls their time together inside and outside prison.
Yassin al-Haj Saleh’s twelfth letter to his wife Samira al-Khalil, abducted in Douma in 2013, is penned on the occasion of her birthday, “the only day I’ve ever celebrated since your disappearance.”
Following the collapse of Jaysh al-Islam’s rule in Douma, Yassin al-Haj Saleh traveled to Turkey to seek answers from the city’s displaced residents about his wife, Samira, and three other activists abducted with her there in 2013.
By releasing the names of thousands of detainees perished in its custody, the Assad regime may believe it can turn the page on the issue of the "disappeared" once and for all. International law, however, demands accountability, a legal expert on impunity tells Al-Jumhuriya in a wide-ranging interview.
In his ninth letter to his missing wife Samira al-Khalil, abducted in Douma in 2013, Yassin al-Haj Saleh writes that “a crack in the wall of your dark prison” may now have opened.
Al-Jumhuriya speaks to three women from the Families for Freedom movement about their campaign to free Syria’s 200,000-plus missing detainees; a campaign they say makes the Assad regime "really angry."
Yassin al-Haj Saleh's eighth letter to his missing wife Samira al-Khalil, abducted in Douma in 2013.
In the second of two pieces marking four years since the abduction of the 'Douma 4' activists, Karam Nachar tells the story of Razan Zaitouneh, the "exceptionally" courageous democracy activist who "terrified" Islamists and the Assad regime alike—and paid dearly for doing so.
Hind Rifai reflects on the parallels between Samira al-Khalil’s diary under siege in Douma and the poems of Anna Akhmatova.