Palestinian activist killed in Syria in 2015, wife says

By Hisham Shaabani

BEIRUT (AA) - Syrian-Palestinian activist Basil Khartabil was executed by the Bashar al-Assad regime in October of 2015, Khartabil’s wife, Noura Ghazi al-Safadi, has asserted.

Writing on her Facebook page Tuesday evening, al-Safadi said her husband was killed two years ago after first being detained by the Syrian regime in 2012, one year after the eruption of Syria’s civil war.

Without providing a source for her information, she went on to say that Khartabil had been subject to torture during his lengthy incarceration.

Upon hearing news of his death online, several Syrian activists paid tribute to Khartabil, describing him as an “icon of peaceful opposition in Syria”.

On March 15, 2012, the Syrian authorities reportedly detained Khartabil in the Mazza district of Damascus after ransacking his home and seizing his computer.

Later the same year, Foreign Policy magazine ranked Khartabil 19th on its list of the world’s most important thinkers due to his calls to adopt a peaceful approach to the ongoing push to oust Assad.

According to the U.K.-based Syrian Network for Human Rights, more than 65,000 people have been “forcibly disappeared” in Syria since the civil conflict began in 2011.