Prominent Palestinian thinker and writer Salameh Keili died of disease at the age 63 in the Jordanian capital Amman on Tuesday. The Syrian Coalition offered its condolences to his family, saying that he was an outspoken critic of the Assad regime.
Syrian and Palestinian writers mourned Keili’s death. The Syrian Coalition said that Keili passed away after “a lifetime of struggle against tyranny and injustice. Since the beginning of the Syrian revolution, Keili dedicated his pen and mind to expose the terrorist practices of the Assad regime.”
Keili was detained twice by the Assad regime; the first in 1992 when he remained in prison for eight years on charges of “countering the goals of the revolution.” He was also detained in 2012. After his release from prison, he was deported to Jordan.
Keili published some 30 books on politics, economics and Marxist theory, including “Revolution and Organizational Problems,” “Criticism of Popular Marxism,” and “Imperialism and the Looting of the World.” He also wrote many articles for local and Arab newspapers about the Assad regime’s crimes and its brutal crackdown. He was a member of the Association of Syrian Writers.
Born in the Palestinian town of Birzeit in 1955, Keili was a prominent leftist political activist in the Arab left and the Palestinian resistance. He studied political science at Baghdad University and then moved to Syria in 1981. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
