The Assad regime executed a prominent Palestinian-Syrian software developer Bassel Khartabil, also known as Bassel Safadi. Safadi was detained in 2012 and taken to one of the Assad regime’s prisons in Damascus. According to many reports from international human rights groups, tens of thousands of detainees have died in Assad’s prisons since the popular uprising broke out in March 2011.
Amnesty International on Tuesday confirmed Safdai was executed back in 2015. His wife, rights activist Nora Ghazi Safadi on Tuesday wrote on her Facebook page that her husband died just days after he was taken from Adra Prison near Damascus to an undisclosed location in Damascus on October 3, 2015.
Nora posted ironic remarks addressing the Assad regime. “This is the end that suits a hero like him. Thank you for killing my lover. I was the bride of the revolution because of you. And because of you I became a widow. This is a loss for Syria. This is loss for Palestine. This is my loss,” she wrote.
Born in 1981, Safadi was one of Syria’s leading pro-free speech and democracy activists. He was awarded the title of the Ambassador of Creative Commons for his contribution to the Mozilla projects.
He is known for leading many technical and innovative projects. His final project was the New Palmyra Project which sought to recreate, through open-source tools, the ancient ruins of Palmyra. As an extension of this project, a massive 3D-printed rendering of one of the Palmyra Tetrapylons was created.
Safadi was the co-founder of Damascus’ Aiki Lab, a collaborative online community of open-source information and programs that is credited with “vastly extending online access and knowledge to the Syrian people.” (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
