Razan Zaitouneh (or Zeitunah; ar, رزان زيتونة; born 29 April 1977) is a Syrian human rights lawyer and civil society

activist Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good. Forms of activism range fro ...

. Actively involved in the Syrian uprising, she went into hiding after being accused by the government of being a foreign agent and her husband was arrested. Zaitouneh has documented human rights in Syria for the

Local Coordination Committees of Syria The Local Coordination Committees of Syria ( ar, لجان التنسيق المحلية في سوريا: ''LCCSyria'' or ''LCCs'') are a network of local groups that organise and report on protests as part of the Syrian uprising. In June 2011, t ...

. Zaitouneh was kidnapped on 9 December 2013, most likely by Jaysh al-Islam. Her fate remains unknown. It is suspected that she has been killed.

Education

Zaitouneh graduated from law school in Damascus in 1999 and in 2001 started her work as a lawyer.

Legal and human rights activism

She has been a member of the team of lawyers for defense of political prisoners since 2001. In the same year, Razan was one of the founders of the Human Rights Association in Syria (HRAS). In 2005, Razan Zaitouneh established SHRIL (the Syrian Human Rights Information Link), through which she continues to report about human rights violations in Syria. From 2005 through to her 2013 disappearance, Razan Zaitouneh was an active member of the Committee to Support Families of Political Prisoners in Syria. Syrian State television aired announcement that Razan Zaitouneh was a foreign agent on 23 March 2011, after which she went into hiding while continuing her legal and human rights work, in order to avoid being arrested. Zaitouneh founded the

Violations Documentation Center in Syria The Violations Documentation Center in Syria (VDC, ar, مركز توثيق الانتهاكات في سوريا) is a network of Syrian opposition activists whose aim is to document human rights violations perpetrated since the beginning of the ...

in April 2011 to document human rights violations and abuses in the country by all sides. She also contributed to human rights violations reports circulated by the

, of which she was one of the founders. Her husband, Wael Hamadeh (or Wael Hamada, or Wa'el Hammada) was arrested on 12 May 2011. His brother 'Abd al-Rahman Hammada was also arrested. Wael Hamadeh was questioned in prison about his wife's human rights work, then Wael Hamadeh released on 1 August 2011. On 27 October 2011, she was awarded the 2011 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of thought, jointly with four other Arabs. She was previously awarded the

Anna Politkovskaya Award The Anna Politkovskaya Award was established in 2006 to remember and honor the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya (1958–2006), murdered in Moscow on 7 October 2006 in order to silence her reporting about the war in Chechnya. The award i ...

by Reach All Women in War. In 2013 Razan Zaitouneh was granted the International Women of Courage Award.

2013 disappearance

Pro-opposition websites reported that on 9 December 2013 Zaitouneh had been kidnapped along with her husband, Wael Hamadeh, and two colleagues, Samira Khalil and Nazem Hammadi, in the opposition-held town of Douma to the north of Damascus. As of December 2015, their whereabouts were still unknown and the identity of the kidnappers uncertain, although it was suspected that the Islamist Salafi rebel group Jaysh al-Islam was responsible. , the Associated Press (AP) was unaware of significant evidence for Zaitouneh's fate. AP stated clues suggesting that Jaysh al-Islam had detained Zaitouneh and held her in Tawbeh Prison. Jaysh al-Islam denied the claim. One clue was a graffito seen by several witnesses on a prison cell wall stating, "I miss my mother – Razan Zaitouneh, 2016." Another clue was the use of one of the Violations Documentation Center computers, taken together with Zaitouneh in the December 2013 kidnapping, from a Jaysh al-Islam

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

at Tawbeh Prison. Another opposition activist,

Mazen Darwish Mazen Darwish ( ar, مازن درويش) is a Syrian lawyer and free speech advocate. He is the president of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression. News organizations, including Reuters and the Associated Press, have described him ...

, stated that Zaitouneh was held by Jaysh al-Islam until early 2017. AP judged it likely that Zaitouneh had been killed. On 17 February 2020, one of the Syrian intelligence agencies declared that it had discovered a mass grave in al-Ub around the eastern Ghouta dictrict, containing around 70 bodies. One of them appeared to be that of Razan Zaitouneh. In 2020, French authorities arrested Majdi Mustapha Nameh (''Islam Alloush'') in relation to Zaitouneh's disappearance. In March 2021, a criminal complaint was filed in France by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, holding Jaysh al-Islam responsible for her abduction. In July 2022, a clue reported by '' Deutsche Welle'' was that two months after the abduction, a member of Jaysh al-Islam had used Zaitouneh's computer to log on to his social media accounts. The computer had been given to Zaitouneh through a project funded by the United States Department of State, enabling

geolocation Geopositioning, also known as geotracking, geolocalization, geolocating, geolocation, or geoposition fixing, is the process of determining or estimating the geographic position of an object. Geopositioning yields a set of geographic coordinates ...

and identification of the user. The ''Deutsche Welle'' investigation suggested that the abduction had been masterminded by two local Jaysh al-Islam leaders, ''Abu Qusai al-Dirani'' and ''Samir Kaakeh''. When the leader of Jaysh al-Islam at the time,

Zahran Alloush Zahran Alloush ( ar, زَهْرَانُ عَلُّوشٍ, Zahrān ʿAlūš, 1971 – 25 December 2015) was a Syrian Islamist leader active in the Syrian Civil War. He was the commander of Jaysh al-Islam (or Army of Islam), a major component of the ...

, learnt about the abduction he tried to negotiate an agreement to free her and three other abductees. However, Zahran Alloush was killed in a Russian airstrike. His successor (and cousin) ''Mohammed Alloush'' refused to continue the proposals for a deal.Exclusive: How Syria's hard-line rebels turned against a human rights activist
17.07.2021, Lewis Sanders IV, Birgitta Schülke, Maria Chehadeh, Deutsche Welle,

Awards

*Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought 2011 *The 2011

Anna Politkovskaya Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya (;, ; uk, Ганна Степанівна Політковська , 30 August 1958 – 7 October 2006) was a Russian journalist and human rights activist, who reported on political events in Russia, in partic ...

Award *The

Ibn Rushd Prize for Freedom of Thought The Ibn Rushd Prize for Freedom of Thought (german: Ibn-Ruschd-Preis für freies Denken; ) is a prestigious prize awarded in Germany which recognises independent, forward-thinking, individuals or organisations who have contributed to democracy an ...

for the year 2012 in Berlin

Notes and references

External links