Samira Khalil


Samira Khalil is a Syrian dissident, former political detainee and a revolutionary activist from the Homs region of Syria. She was arrested and detained for four years from 1987-1991 for her opposition to the Al-Assad government in Syria. Khalil is currently missing after being abducted in Douma on December 9, 2013, along with fellow activists Razan Zaitouneh, Wael Hamada, and Nazem Hammadi.

Detention

Samira Khalil was arrested and detained for four years from 1987 to 1991 for her opposition to the Hafez al-Assad regime in Syria.

Human Rights Activities

After her imprisonment in the eighties, Khalil operated a publishing house before shifting her efforts to working with the families of detainees and writing about detention in Syria. Before her abduction, she was working to help women in Douma support themselves by initiating small income generating projects, and had stayed in Douma to establish two women's centres.
Khalil and her husband Yassin al-Haj Saleh were the subject of the documentary Baladna Alraheeb, which documented the period in their lives prior to Khalil's 2013 abduction.
Khalil was awarded the Petra Kelly Prize by the Heinrich Böll Foundation in 2014 for her work at the Center for Documentation of Violations in Syria.