Activists circulated reports quoting sources inside the Adra prison in the Damascus countryside that the regime intends to carry out the death penalty against the imprisoned Syrian activist Zilal Ibrahim al-Salahani, who was arrested by the regime on July 28, 2012 from the Al-Furqan district in Aleppo province.
The sources said that there were four other prisoners the regime intended to execute.
Zilal Salahani was a student in the chemistry department in the science college in Aleppo University. She was born in 1993 and was active in the peaceful mobilization in Aleppo city and its university. She contributed to humanitarian work whereby she helped displaced civilians and supported them with food, medicine, and securing places for them to shelter.
The Euro-Mediterranean Network said that the regime arrested Zilal with two others and transferred them to criminal security on August 8, 2012, and this was the last information available about her.
The network added that her friends had not been able to visit her, nor was her family, who were originally outside the country. There has been no news about her since February 19, 2014, when it was reported that she was present in the central Adra prison to be close to the military field court.
The regime refused to release her, and has refused to put her name on prisoner exchange lists.
Activists launched a campaign to free her, including, “one of those loyal to Zilal Salahani,” which staged sit-ins in the al-Ashrafiyeh district and the science college to demand her release, raising banners in solidarity in a number of cities, including the Saudi city of Yanbu, Istanbul in Turkey, and in Damascus and Jabal Qassioun, while a protest was staged in the Al-Haydariyeh district calling for freedom for Zilal.
Local councils and human rights groups have called on the regime in Syria to release Zilal Salahani as well as all the prisoners in the regime prisons.
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
