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Yusuf-Al-Jamri has been summoned to the National Security Agency after exposing torture in a plea to the country’s king.
* Yusuf Al-Jamri made a plea to King Hamad about the torture he suffered at the hands of the National Security Agency on Thursday 3 August * Immediately afterwards, the NSA summoned him for interrogations * The NSA interrogated Yusuf three times this week, tortured him, and threatened him with rape * The NSA is responsible for the torture and sexual assault of detainees including women’s rights defender Ebtisam Al-Sayegh * The NSA was given arrest powers in January 2017. Its president is Sheikh Talal Al Khalifa, a Bahraini royal and Sandhurst graduate
The National Security Agency has summoned online activist Yusuf Al-Jamri for interrogation after he published a video message on Thursday 3 August to King Hamad of Bahrain accusing them of torturing him. The NSA is the subject of many recent torture allegations and is headed by Sheikh Talal Al Khalifa, a Bahraini royal and Sandhurst graduate.
Al-Jamri states in his message to King Hamad that the National Security Agency threatened him with rape and reprisals against his family, and insulted him and his faith. He says to the King, “Your Majesty, I was tortured. …The interrogator said that he acts with the highest authority after your Majesty’s, and nothing can stop him.”
Since publishing his message to the King at 6.26 PM (Bahrain time) on 3 August, Al-Jamri was immediately summoned to the NSA again.
The NSA repeatedly called Al-Jamri’s wife urging him to present himself at the Muharraq Security Complex. Al-Jamri shared images of the many calls on his Twitter.
Al-Jamri was summoned to for interrogation at the Muharraq Security Complex by the National Security Agency on 1st and 2nd August. The summons may have been because of his activism on social media. On 20 July, he put out a series of tweets publicising the UK’s criticisms of Bahrain’s human rights situation in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office’s Human Rights and Democracy report.
“Bahrain’s government routinely resorts to harassment to silence human rights defenders. The international community — especially the UK — must demand that Bahrain treats its citizens with respect and end threats of reprisals and outright torture,” Sean Gallagher, Index on Censorship, said.
Abuses by the National Security Agency
Human rights defender Ebtisam Al-Sayegh alleges she was tortured and sexually abused by NSA agents in May 2017. Amnesty International reported on her torture: “When she arrived [at Muharraq], she was immediately blindfolded, and in the subsequent hours, she was sexually assaulted, beaten all over her body, kicked in the stomach and kept standing for most of the seven hours she was being interrogated.”
Ebtisam Al-Sayegh told Amnesty: “The men told me ‘no one can protect you’. They took away my humanity, I was weak prey to them.”
On 3 July, Al-Sayegh was re-arrested. The family believes the NSA was responsible for the arrest. She remains in detention, and has been charged under the anti-terrorism law. She is at high risk of ill-treatment, and her health deteriorated significantly during her detention.
National Security Agency: Further Information
In January, the King of Bahrain empowered the NSA with law enforcement powers, reversing one of the only Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) reforms his government had implemented.
Sheikh Talal bin Mohammad Al Khalifa was appointed Director of the NSA in August 2016. Sheikh Talal, a graduate of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, is the son of a former Minister of Interior and brother to Sheikh Fawaz, the ambassador in London.
The NSA has offices in the Muharraq Security Complex. BIRD has recorded a growing number of torture allegations and arbitrary detentions by the NSA since April 2017.
Systematic torture by the NSA in 2011 was recorded by the BICI and led to the stripping of their powers. In April 2011, businessman Karim Al-Fakhrawi was tortured to death in NSA custody.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1501848639305-96eb2c27-f595-4″ taxonomies=”716″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Several journalists reported that they were assaulted by police while covering protests against the meeting, which included leaders of the 19 largest industrial nations in the world plus the EU. Leading up to the summit, freelance journalist Martin Eimermacher was assaulted while police were clearing a protest camp in Hamburg on 2 July, according to Netzpolitik and Jetzt.
Police had demolished protesters’ tents when Eimermacher tried to leave the area, telling police he felt unwell. He said that officers pushed him and several other journalists to the centre of a field. He showed his press card, which was slapped out of his hand by a police officer who then pepper sprayed him.
“In my opinion the most dangerous thing is that this sets an example within Germany and beyond, that such treatment of journalists is acceptable,” Mapping Media Freedom Germany correspondent Pascale Müller said. “There seemed to have been, on an individual level of police officers, a severe lack of understanding of the rights of the press and their role as an observer and part of a healthy democracy.”
On 7 July, ITN News journalist Flo Smith, his producer and cameraperson were all pepper sprayed by police. Photojournalist Henry Langston of Vice UK was struck by a police water cannon. RT UK published a video in which police assaulted and injured photojournalist Zino Peterk, who later had to go to the hospital for his injuries.
On 8 July, Spiegel Online photographer Chris Grodotzki said police assaulted him with pepper spray while he was covering protests in Schulterblatt. Taz reporter Martin Kaul sustained minor injuries when he was hit by protesters while live-streaming the demonstration, according to Deutschlandfunk. Müller noted that some attacks by protesters targeted journalists they perceived as right-wing, “but in some cases it seems that people were already so ‘high on violence’ that they hurt journalists regardless of their political affiliation.”[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_custom_heading text=”Media freedom is under threat worldwide. Journalists are threatened, jailed and even killed simply for doing their job.” font_container=”tag:h3|text_align:left” use_theme_fonts=”yes” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fnewsite02may%2Fcampaigns%2Fpress-regulation%2F|||”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
Index on Censorship monitors press freedom in Germany and 41 other European area nations.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship campaigns against laws that stifle journalists’ work. We also publish an award-winning magazine featuring work by and about censored journalists. Support our work today.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator][vc_column_text]“Many journalists who covered the protest directly and that I have spoken to were emotionally and physically affected even a week after” Müller said. The press freedom violations were widely condemned, but according to Müller “The most shocking revelation came after the protests, when Sueddeutsche Zeitung revealed that the BKA had monitored selected journalists during their summit coverage over the past 10 years. This was very disturbing and lead to a certain level of insecurity within the profession. “
Other journalists reported the use of intimidation tactics by police. In the Schanze neighbourhood, Frank Schneider, a reporter for Bild, tweeted that police told journalists to “leave or you’ll go to the hospital”. F-Mag journalist Wiebke Harms reported on Twitter that police in Schanze told her: “Your press card is worth nothing.” Freelance journalist Reuben Neugebauer was told “now press freedom is over”.
Thirty-two journalists had their accreditation revoked by federal police on 7 and 8 July. German government spokesperson Steffen Seibert cited ‘security concerns’ as the rationale for the loss of access to the summit.
Journalists who lost accreditation include the photographer Björn Kietzmann, Rafael Heygster (Weser Kurier), photographer for Junge Welt, Willi Effenberger Alfred Denzinger (Beobachter News), photographer Chris Grodotzki (Spiegel Online), Adil Yigit (Avrupa Postasi), editor Elsa Koester (Neues Deutschland) and freelance photographer Po Ming Cheung.
When trying to enter a press area, Grodotzki and Yigit were told by police that their accreditation was no longer valid. Photographers Björn Kietzmann for Weser Kurier and Rafael Heygster were also not allowed to enter the press area.
Müller does not think that this treatment will intimidate journalists into stepping back from events like this in the future. “Quite the opposite, I think that many journalists and their outlets are quite resilient against such types of violence or blocked access. G20 brought press freedom issues to the forefront in Germany and made journalists even more aware of their role as critical observers, even in the middle of such violent tension and intimidation attempts.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1501833910854-5bf94268-20d1-5″ taxonomies=”77″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]8 August: Index on Censorship welcomes a ruling by a Russian court temporarily halting the deportation of independent journalist Khudoberdi Nurmatov, better known by his pen name Ali Feruz. The decision follows a European Court of Human Rights order to delay the deportation until it can rule on the journalist’s appeal.
Index calls on the Russian authorities to allow accept Nurmatov’s asylum application and ensure he is treated safely.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”94957″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Journalist Khudoberdi Nurmatov, who works for independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, is set to be deported back to Uzbekistan, where it is feared he will be tortured.
“Deportation to Uzbekistan puts his life at serious risk. If sent back Nurmatov faces a long prison sentence under cruel conditions, including torture. We call on Russia to stop the deportation and accept Nurmatov’s asylum application,” Hannah Machlin, manager for Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project, said.
A Moscow court ruled on 1 August 2017 that Nurmatov (also known as Ali Feruz) violated immigration laws. He is currently being held in a deportation centre in Moscow where he faces immediate expulsion from the country. In May 2016 and in February 2017, Russia refused to grant the journalist temporary asylum.
In 2008, Novaya Gazeta reported that Nurmatov was abducted by Uzbek security forces who demanded he provide information on his contacts. He was subsequently beaten and threatened. He later applied for asylum in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, but decided to flee to Russia in 2011, where he feared extradition. Because of his refusal to work for Uzbek security forces, friends and supporters are concerned that he could be abducted or tortured.
According to his lawyer Daniil Khaimovich, on 2 August Feruz attempted to commit suicide in a hallway at the courthouse. The journalist then told his lawyer: “I would rather die than return to Uzbekistan.”
Nurmatov has covered a wide range of topics at the paper including on abuse of power, LGBT issues and conditions of central asian immigrants in Russia.
“Ali is an extremely valuable asset as he’s been covering the migrant community in Russia that media normally can’t report on easily. He is committed to his work and shows real compassion to the problems he reports on. We can’t imagine losing him,” Anna Baydakova, a politics reporter for the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, told Index on Censorship. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1502188585770-4b2b310d-e3a3-9″ taxonomies=”7349, 15″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]
The Commissar Vanishes, the late David King’s visual history of the falsification of images as a means of propaganda in the Soviet Union, explores how Stalin manipulated photography to erase all memory of his victims.
The murder of rivals and former comrades was very often followed the removal of these “counter-revolutionaries” from photographs with scalpel and airbrush. At the same time, ordinary citizens, fearful of being in possession of banned material, defaced their copies books and photographs with scissors and India ink. King’s book offers a contrast between the original photographs alongside their doctored counterparts, for a chilling look into one of darkest periods in history.
It was in 1970, 17 years after Stalin’s death that King first encountered these photos in Moscow. “When I inquired about photographs of Trotsky, the reply would invariably be, ‘Why do you ask for Trotsky? Trotsky not important in Revolution. Stalin important!’,” King wrote in the introduction to the book. “In the dark green metal boxes containing mug shots of subjects starting with ‘T’ were hundreds of photographs of famous Russians: Tolstoy, Turgenev, etc.–but no Trotsky. They had completely wiped him out. It was at this moment that I determined to start my collection.”
“Propaganda did not work just on what was shown; it worked also on what was omitted. Stalin was a master of this. Long before the advent of Photoshop, technicians in Russia manipulated photos so much that they became outright lies. David King, in The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia, wrote that during the Great Purges, in the 1930s, ‘a new form of falsification emerged. The physical eradication of Stalin’s political opponents at the hands of the secret police was swiftly followed by their obliteration from all forms of pictorial existence’. The book highlights classic cases of ‘now you see me, now you don’t’. It includes series of images featuring the same backdrops but with rotating casts, depending on who was or wasn’t in favour at the time.”
As Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley, author of How Propaganda Works, told Steinfeld: “At the heart of authoritarian propaganda is the manipulating of reality. The authoritarian must undermine this.”
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row content_placement=”top”][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”100 Years On” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fnewsite02may%2F2017%2F06%2F100-years-on%2F|||”][vc_column_text]Through a range of in-depth reporting, interviews and illustrations, the summer 2017 issue of Index on Censorship magazine explores how the consequences of the 1917 Russian Revolution still affect freedoms today, in Russia and around the world.
With: Andrei Arkhangelsky, BG Muhn, Nina Khrushcheva[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”91220″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/newsite02may/2017/06/100-years-on/”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1481888488328{padding-bottom: 50px !important;}”][vc_custom_heading text=”Subscribe” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fnewsite02may%2Fsubscribe%2F|||”][vc_column_text]In print, online. In your mailbox, on your iPad.
Subscription options from £18 or just £1.49 in the App Store for a digital issue.
Every subscriber helps support Index on Censorship’s projects around the world.
Jenni Monet, one of a half-dozen journalists arrested this year covering the Standing Rock pipeline protests in North Dakota, recalled being verbally abused by police during her 30-hour detention, including hours in a freezing garage. Monet’s ordeal received some coverage at the time, but less than anti-press incidents in media-saturated cities or on the presidential campaign trail. And it’s been tough to sustain attention, even though the freelance journalist’s story is far from over. Monet, who spoke via video chat to reporters last week in the Committee to Protect Journalists’ office, is scheduled to go to trial next year, charged with trespassing and rioting. Cases like Monet’s, said Committee to Protect Journalists senior researcher Alex Ellerbeck, illustrate why the group is partnering with more than 20 other journalism organizations to launch the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, which will assemble the details in one place, allowing users to search all press-freedom incidents in the United States. Nineteen journalists have been arrested in the U.S. this year, including several during inauguration protests in Washington in January. Read the full article
Most of the activists who embraced the calls for freedom that resonated across Syria in 2011 were imprisoned, killed or forced into exile before anyone even knew their names. One whose reputation had become known beyond Syria’s borders was Bassel Khartabil Safadi, an Internet pioneer who embodied the hopes of a new generation that technology could be leveraged to build a fairer world. Read the full article
Stressing that “constant vigilance and an honest accounting of the country’s track record on press freedom are essential,” a coalition of press freedom groups has launched a first-of-its-kind website to track problems faced by reporters on the job in the United States. Read the full article
A Syrian internet freedom activist was executed soon after he disappeared from prison in late 2015, his wife and supporters say they have learned. Bassel Khartabil’s wife said he was killed in October 2015 after receiving a death sentence. Read the full article
The family of Bassel Khartabil, a Syrian-Palestinian software engineer and free speech activist, confirmed that he had been subjected to an extrajudicial execution in October 2015. The undersigned human rights organisations condemn the extrajudicial execution of Khartabil and call for an investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death.
On 1 August 2017, Noura Ghazi Safadi, Khartabil’s wife, announced on Facebook that her husband has been killed. She wrote: “Words are difficult to come by while I am about to announce, on behalf of Bassel’s family and mine, the confirmation of the death sentence and execution of my husband Bassel Khartabil Safadi. He was executed just days after he was taken from Adra prison in October 2015. This is the end that suits a hero like him.”
On 15 March 2012, Military Intelligence arrested Bassel Khartabil and held incommunicado for eight months before moving him to Adra prison in Damascus in December 2012. During this time he was subjected to torture and other ill-treatment. He remained in Adra prison until 3 October 2015, when he managed to inform his family that he was being transferred to an undisclosed location. That was the last time his family heard from him.
His family subsequently received unconfirmed information that he may have been transferred to the military-run field court inside the Military Police base in Qaboun in Damascus. These courts are notorious for conducting closed-door proceedings that do not meet minimum international standards for a fair trial.
Before his arrest, Bassel Khartabil used his technical expertise to help advance freedom of speech and access to information via the internet. He has won many awards, including the 2013 Index on Censorship Digital Freedom Award for using technology to promote an open and free internet, and was named one of Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2012 “for insisting, against all odds, on a peaceful Syrian revolution.”
Since his detention, human rights groups at a national, regional and international level campaigned for his immediate and unconditional 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 still refused to free him.
The signatory organizations express the deepest sorrow at the death of Bassel Khartabil and believe that his arrest and subsequent execution are a direct result of his human rights work and his efforts to promote freedom of speech and access to information.
We urge the Syrian authorities to:
Immediately disclose the circumstances of the execution of Bassel Khartabil;
End extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearance, arbitrary arrests, and torture and other ill-treatment;
Release all detainees in Syria held for peacefully exercising their legitimate rights to freedom of expression and association.
Signed:
1. Access Now
2. Amnesty International (AI)
3. Arab Digital Expression Foundation (ADEF)
4. Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI)
5. Article 19
6. Association for Progressive Communications (APC)
7. Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS)
8. CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation
9. Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
10. English PEN
11. Euromed Rights
12. Front Line Defenders (FLD)
13. FIDH, within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
14. Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR)
15. Hivos International
16. Index on Censorship
17. Iraqi Network for Social Media (INSM)
18. Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada (LRWC)
19. Maharat Foundation
20. Metro Centre to Defend Journalists in Iraqi Kurdistan
21. Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA)
22. PAX for Peace
23. PEN International
24. Reporters without Borders (RSF)
25. Sisters’ Arab Forum for Human Rights (SAF)
26. SKeyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom
27. Social Media Exchange (SMEX)
28. Syrian Centre for Democracy and Civil Rights
29. Syrian Center For Legal Studies and Researches
30. Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM)
31. Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ)
32. Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR)
33. Vigilance for Democracy and the Civic State
34. World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1501752858054-88ccde4a-8e21-0″ taxonomies=”5407″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Index on Censorship joined more than 20 press freedom organisations announcing the launch today of the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a new nonpartisan website dedicated to documenting press freedom abuses across the United States.
In recent months, journalists have been charged with crimes while covering protests in Washington D.C. and North Dakota; stopped at the border and subjected to searches of their electronic devices; and physically assaulted, in one case by a congressional candidate. Data collected on the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker shows that 19 journalists have been arrested in the course of their work in 2017 and that at least 10 reporters are currently facing charges. In 2017 at least four journalists have been stopped at the border and 11 have faced physical attacks, according to the tracker. These numbers may increase as we receive new information.
“While the focus has been on the Trump administration’s relationship with the press, American journalists have encountered more widespread obstacles to reporting — from violent protesters to police harassment — across the country as we detailed in our US report, researched and compiled with the methodology we developed for Mapping Media Freedom, our three-year-old database monitoring press freedom violations in 42 European area countries,” Melody Patry, head of advocacy at Index on Censorship, said.
“The United States has some of the strongest legal protections for press freedom in the world and a robust and varied media landscape, but this cannot be taken for granted. Open hostility, threats of leak prosecutions, and arrests have created a precarious situation for journalists,” said Alex Ellerbeck, senior research associate for the U.S. at the Committee to Protect Journalists and chair of the steering committee for the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. “A full and honest accounting of challenges to press freedom in this country is sorely needed.”
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker collects data based on news reports and tips submitted by journalists, professional organisations, and press freedom organisations. The coalition behind the tracker will use the research in letters, legal briefs, and advocacy campaigns.
“With the Trump administration ramping up its war on journalism, this initiative could not come at a more important time,” said Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. “We hope it will be vital to highlighting the threats to press freedom in the U.S. and the important work journalists do to hold the government accountable.”
About the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker
Led by the Committee to Protect Journalists and Freedom of the Press Foundation, the site will serve as a central repository for data at a time when journalists in the U.S. are facing increased hostility. Freedom of the Press Foundation is leading the day-to-day operations of the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, with its senior reporter, Peter Sterne, serving as the managing editor. The Committee to Protect Journalists is providing the initial funding and chairing the steering committee. The steering committee also includes representatives from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Knight Institute at Columbia University, Reporters Without Borders and Index on Censorship. A full list of partners is on the website.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”12″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1501680559388-7ab4706a-4916-9″ taxonomies=”8996″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Journalists continue to face unprecedented pressure in Europe as reports submitted to Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom platform in the first quarter of 2017 demonstrate. Media professionals—primarily in Turkey, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine—were arrested at an alarming rate, more than a fourfold increase over the fourth quarter of 2016.
“During the first quarter of 2017, the MMF database registered several trends that we find to be acute challenges to media freedom. Some European governments have clearly interfered with media pluralism. Others have harassed, detained and intimidated journalists. All of these actions debase and devalue the work of the press and undermine a basic foundation of democracy,” Hannah Machlin, project manager at Mapping Media Freedom, said.
During Q1, authorities in multiple countries shut down critical and independent media outlets and intimidated reporters who asked challenging questions. Turkey continues to be the largest jailer of journalists in the world with a total of 148 journalists in prison by the end of March according to the Platform for Independent Journalists P24, a Turkey-based MMF partner, which monitors the number of arrests in the country.
Even reporters in countries often thought to respect freedom of the press, such as Sweden, France and Germany, faced obstacles to performing their professional duties. They were abused by the leaders of extreme populist movements and their supporters, who encouraged a distrust of “mainstream media”; and blocked by nervous politicians who were seeing, particularly in France, the old political certainties swept away.
Between 1 January and 31 March 2017, Mapping Media Freedom’s network of correspondents and other journalists submitted a total of 299 violations of press freedom to the database.
2013 Freedom of Expression Digital Activism Award-winning Bassel Khartabil.
Index on Censorship mourns the death of 2013 Freedom of Expression Digital Activism Award-winning Bassel Khartabil, who had been held Syrian prisons since 2012. His execution by the Syrian government was announced by his wife, Noura Ghazi Safadi, on Tuesday 1 August 2017.
“Bassel was a true inspiration and hero for us all. Index joins with outraged members of the international community to mourn the death of Bassel, who lived and died for his belief in freedom of speech, transparency and a free internet. We extend our deepest condolences to his family,” Melody Patry, head of advocacy, Index on Censorship said.
A Syrian-born Palestinian digital activist, Khartabil (aka Bassel Safadi) worked to build a career in software and web development. Before his arrest, he used his technical expertise to help advance freedom of speech and access to information via the internet. Among other projects, he founded Creative Commons Syria, a non-profit organisation that enables people to share artistic and other work using free legal tools. Khartabil’s digital work is still advancing knowledge: colleagues produced a 3D model of the ancient Palmyra ruins destroyed by Isis using data collected by Khartabil before his detention.
In 2010, Khartabil started Syria’s first hackerspace, Aiki Lab, in Damascus. It was a base from which he helped advance the open source movement in Syria. Khartabil is also known for his work on free culture projects such as Mozilla Firefox, and was an avid contributor and editor to Wikipedia. Prior to his arrest, he was working on software to enable the free flow of information in a country where online communications and networks were closely monitored by the government.
Syria’s military intelligence illegally detained Khartabil on March 15, 2012. He was held incommunicado in detention for eight months and was subjected to torture and other ill-treatment. He faced military field court proceedings for his peaceful activities in support of freedom of expression. A military judge interrogated Khartabil for a few minutes on December 9, 2012, but he had heard nothing further about his legal case, he told his family later. In December 2012 he was moved to ‘Adra prison in Damascus, where he remained until October 3, 2015, when he was transferred to an undisclosed location. On 12 November 2015, Khartabil’s wife, Noura Ghazi Safadi, reported rumours that her husband had been sentenced to death by the military courts, although the Assad regime never confirmed or denied the reports.
According to anonymous sources, Khartabil’s wife was told that after his disappearance he was tried by a military field court in the military police headquarters in al-Qaboun, which sentenced him to death. Military field courts in Syria are exceptional courts with secret, closed-door proceedings that do not meet international fair trial standards. Defendants have no legal representation, and the courts’ decisions are binding and not subject to appeal. People brought before such courts who were later released have said that proceedings are perfunctory, often lasting only minutes.
Throughout 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.
Bassel Khartabil, winner of the 2013 Freedom of Expression Digital Activism Award, was in prison when he won the award. His friends accepted the award on his behalf. From left: Jon Phillips, Dana Trometer and then-chair of Index on Censorship Jonathan Dimbleby.
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