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Ragheed Al-Tatari
Ragheed Ahmed al-Tatari (; born 25 December 1954) is a former military aviator from Syria, recognized as the longest-serving political prisoner in the country. His arrest by Syrian intelligence occurred in 1981, following his refusal to engage in the bombing of Hama and his subsequent flight to Jordan. Since that time, he has been detained in multiple correctional facilities administered by the Assad regime in Syria. After enduring approximately 43 years of imprisonment, he was ultimately freed on 8 December 2024. Early career Ragheed al-Tatari was born on 25 December 1954, in Damascus, to a Syrian father and a Syrian mother of Circassian origin. Hence he is a cousin of the famous Circassian Syrian Islamic scholar Jawdat Said Tsey. He commenced his studies at the Air Force Academy in 1972 and successfully graduated in 1975. Following his graduation, he served in a number of air force squadrons. Arrest and trial In 1980, Ragheed al-Tatari faced prosecution in court for his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Damascus
Damascus ( , ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in the Levant region by population, largest city of Syria. It is the oldest capital in the world and, according to some, the fourth Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. Known colloquially in Syria as () and dubbed, poetically, the "City of Jasmine" ( ), Damascus is a major cultural center of the Levant and the Arab world. Situated in southwestern Syria, Damascus is the center of a large metropolitan area. Nestled among the eastern foothills of the Anti-Lebanon mountain range inland from the eastern shore of the Mediterranean on a plateau above sea level, Damascus experiences an arid climate because of the rain shadow effect. The Barada, Barada River flows through Damascus. Damascus is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. First settled in the 3rd millennium BC, it was chosen as the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate from 661 to 750. Afte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tadmor Prison
Tadmor prison () was located in Palmyra (''Tadmor'' in Arabic) in the deserts of eastern Syria approximately 200 kilometers northeast of Damascus. It was also referred to as the ''Desert Prison''. Tadmor prison was known for harsh conditions, extensive human rights abuse, torture and summary executions. A 2001 report by Amnesty International called it a source of "despair, torture and degrading treatment." It was captured and destroyed by militants of the Islamic State (IS) in May 2015. History Founding The structures were originally built as military barracks by the French Mandate forces. Prison massacre During the 1980s, Tadmor prison housed thousands of Syrian prisoners, both political and criminal and it was also the scene of the June 27, 1980 ''Tadmor Prison massacre'' of prisoners by Rifaat al-Assad, the day after the Syrian branch of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood narrowly failed in an attempt to assassinate his brother, president Hafez al-Assad. Members of units of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Living People
Purpose: Because living persons may suffer personal harm from inappropriate information, we should watch their articles carefully. By adding an article to this category, it marks them with a notice about sources whenever someone tries to edit them, to remind them of WP:BLP (biographies of living persons) policy that these articles must maintain a neutral point of view, maintain factual accuracy, and be properly sourced. Recent changes to these articles are listed on Special:RecentChangesLinked/Living people. Organization: This category should not be sub-categorized. Entries are generally sorted by family name In many societies, a surname, family name, or last name is the mostly hereditary portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family. It is typically combined with a given name to form the full name of a person, although several give .... Maintenance: Individuals of advanced age (over 90), for whom there has been no new documentation in the last ten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1954 Births
Events January * January 3 – The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting. * January 7 – Georgetown–IBM experiment: The first public demonstration of a machine translation system is held in New York, at the head office of IBM. * January 10 – BOAC Flight 781, a de Havilland Comet jet plane, disintegrates in mid-air due to metal fatigue, and crashes in the Mediterranean near Elba; all 35 people on board are killed. * January 12 – 1954 Blons avalanches, Avalanches in Austria kill more than 200. * January 15 – Mau Mau rebellion, Mau Mau leader Waruhiu Itote is captured in Kenya. * January 17 – In Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia, Milovan Đilas, one of the leading members of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, is relieved of his duties. * January 20 – The US-based National Negro Network is established, with 46 member radio stations. * January 21 – The first nuclear-powered submarine, the , is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mazen Al-Hamada
Mazen al-Hamada (; - ) was a Syrian activist from Deir ez-Zor. Hamada was imprisoned and tortured for more than a year and a half for participating in anti-government protests in the context of the Arab Spring in 2011. After being exiled from Syria, he became an asylum seeker in the Netherlands. While residing in Europe, he testified to the abuse he had suffered and witnessed. Hamada became internationally known for his testimony on the crimes of the Ba'athist regime. In 2020, Hamada decided to return to Syria, only to become the victim of enforced disappearance, when he was arrested upon arrival at the airport by Syrian intelligence. His body was found in Sednaya Prison's morgue on December 9, 2024 after the fall of the Assad regime. His funeral, held on 12 December, was attended by hundreds of Syrians; he has since been hailed as a martyr and a symbol of the Syrian opposition. Biography Hamada was a graduate of the Institute of the Petroleum Industry, and worked a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kamal Al-Labwani
Kamal al-Labwani (; born October 10, 1957, in Zabadani, Syria) is a Syrian doctor and artist, known for being imprisoned for several years by Bashar al-Assad's regime. He was released from Adra Prison, near Damascus on November 15, 2011. Before his release, Amnesty International called him a prisoner of conscience. At the beginning of the Syrian civil war, he was briefly a member of the Syrian National Council. Life Dr. Al-Labwani comes from the small town of Zabadani in the Rif Dimashq province, close to the Lebanese border. In 1982, while serving as a military doctor, he observed the Hama massacre, in which the government crushed the uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood. This induced him to oppose Syria's Ba'athist regime. He founded the Syrian Liberal Democratic Union and joined the " Damascus Spring" movement, which briefly flourished after Bashar al-Assad became President of Syria in June 2001 after the death of his father. Kamal al-Labwani was arrested in September ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2014 Syrian Detainee Report
The 2014 Syrian detainee report, also known as the Caesar Report, formally titled A Report into the credibility of certain evidence with regard to Torture and Execution of Persons Incarcerated by the current Syrian regime, is a report that claims to detail "the systematic killing of more than 11,000 detainees by the Syrian government in one region during the Syrian Civil War over a two and half year period from March 2011 to August 2013". It was released on 21 January 2014, a day before talks were due to begin at the Geneva II Conference on Syria, and was commissioned by the government of Qatar. Qatar has been a key funder of the rebels in Syria. The Syrian government questioned the report due to its ties to hostile sides against the Syrian government and pointed to how many of the photos were identified as casualties among international terrorists fighting the Syrian government or Syrian army troops or civilians massacred by them due to supporting the Syrian government. Human R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Syrian Opposition (2011–2024)
The Syrian opposition was an umbrella term for the Syrian revolutionary organizations that opposed Bashar al-Assad's Ba'athist Syria, Ba'athist regime during the Syrian Revolution and Syrian civil war. The opposition factions in Syria became active as grassroots movements during the mass demonstrations against the Ba'athist regime in Syria, Ba'athist regime. The Free Syrian Army (FSA) was the most prominent armed revolutionary group in the initial stages of the war; but it declined and became decentralized by 2015. By 2021, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had become the strongest armed faction within the Syrian opposition. In July 2011, as the situation Early insurgency phase of the Syrian civil war, turned into a civil war, defectors from the Syrian Arab Armed Forces, Syrian Armed Forces formed the Free Syrian Army. In August 2011, dissident groups operating from abroad formed a coalition called the Syrian National Council. A broader organization, the National Coalition of Syrian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fall Of Damascus (2024)
On 7 December 2024, the Syrian opposition group known as the Southern Operations Room, in co-ordination with the Military Operations Command, led forces that entered the Rif Dimashq region of Syria from the south, and those forces then came within of the capital Damascus. The Syrian Army withdrew from multiple points in the outskirts. Concurrently with the advance towards Damascus, opposition militia Tahrir al-Sham and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army in the north launched an offensive into Homs, while the Syrian Free Army advanced into the capital from the southeast. By 8 December 2024, rebel forces entered the city's Barzeh neighborhood. According to official state reports in Russian mass media and media footage, President Bashar al-Assad left Damascus by air to Moscow, where he was granted asylum, sealing the fall of his regime. Background By late 2018, Syrian opposition rebel groups were forced into Idlib Governorate, the last rebel-held governorate of Syri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adra Prison
Adra Prison () was a prison in Syria, on the northeast outskirts of Damascus. Political prisoners are held in the prison, along with a mixture of civil prisoners such as traffic offenders, murderers, and drug dealers. In 2014, the prison held more than 7,000 inmates, a dozen of them women, in space designed for 2,500. ''The Washington Post'' referred to the prison as "infamous". History Ghassan Najjar, an engineer who was imprisoned in 1980, reportedly went on two hunger strikes, one to protest conditions in the prison. His fellow inmates said he was beaten so badly by prison guards trying to force him to eat that he suffered spinal injuries. Mas'ud Hamid, a Kurdish journalism student, was held in solitary confinement in the prison for one year from 2003 to 2004 before he was allowed monthly visits, and Human Rights Watch said that interrogators reportedly tortured him and beat him with a studded whip on the bottom of his feet. His room was , largely filled by a toilet in it. I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Syrian Revolution
The Syrian revolution, also known as the Syrian Revolution of Dignity, was a series of mass protests and civilian uprisings throughout Syria – with a subsequent violent reaction by the Ba'athist regime – lasting from 15 March 2011 to 8 December 2024 as part of the greater Arab Spring in the Arab world. The revolution, which demanded the end of the decades-long Assad family rule, began as minor demonstrations during January 2011 and transformed into large nation-wide protests in March. The uprising was marked by mass protests against the Ba'athist dictatorship of president Bashar al-Assad meeting police and military violence, massive arrests and a brutal crackdown, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths and tens of thousands wounded. 13 years after the start of the revolution, the Assad regime fell in 2024 after a series of rebel offensives. Despite al-Assad's attempts to crush the protests with crackdowns, censorship and concessions, the mass protests had become a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sednaya Prison
Sednaya Prison (), also known as "Human Slaughterhouse" (), was a military prison and death camp in the north of Damascus, Syria, operated by Ba'athist Syria, Ba'athist Syria. Those imprisoned included civilian detainees, Armed factions in the Syrian civil war, anti-government rebels, and political prisoners. In January 2021, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) estimated that 30,000 detainees were killed by the Assad regime in Sednaya from torture, ill-treatment, and mass executions since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, while Amnesty International estimated in February 2017 "that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were Extrajudicial killing, extrajudicially executed at Sednaya between September 2011 and December 2015." On 8 December 2024, the prison was taken over by rebel forces as they Fall of Damascus (2024), advanced into Damascus. The prison administration agreed to surrender the prison to the rebel forces in exchange for their safe withdrawal. Following the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
