Protesters in Syria have held a sit-in demanding justice for four activists who were forcibly disappeared in 2013 and whose fate remains one of the most haunting mysteries of the country’s 13-year civil war.
Emergency services attend the scene after a vehicle drove into a crowd on New Orleans' Canal and Bourbon Street, Wednesday Jan. 1, 2025.
Activists and relatives take part in a protest demanding the whereabouts of four activists who disappeared during the war between opposition groups and former President Bashar Assad's forces, in Douma, Syria, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025. On Dec. 9, 2013, gunmen stormed the Violation Documentation Center in Douma, northeast of Damascus, and took Razan Zaitouneh, her husband Wael Hamadeh, Samira Khalil and Nazem Hammadi.Outspoken and defiantly secular, Zaitouneh was one of Syria’s most well-known human rights activists. Perhaps most dangerously, she was impartial. She chanted in protests against then-President Bashar Assad but was also unflinching in documenting abuses by rebels fighting to oust him.
Saleh said they had repeatedly appealed to various armed groups for cooperation in finding the four activists in the years before Assad's ouster but were met with silence. Her work earned her international recognition, including an International Woman of Courage award presented by U.S. first lady Michelle Obama in 2013.
Today, the Army of Islam remains an armed faction backed by Turkey. It did not fight alongside the other Islamist factions that led the offensive against Assad and remains excluded from the HTS-led Syrian leadership. Recently, an Army of Islam delegation met HTS leader Ahmad Sharaa to explore integration into the new Syrian system, but no agreement has been reached.
Samira Khalil Michelle Obama Razan Zaitouneh Ahmad Sharaa Hamza Bayraqdar Wafa Moustafa World News
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