Wejdan Nassif, a friend and former cellmate of Samira al-Khalil, the Syrian democracy activist imprisoned by Hafez al-Assad and then abducted by Islamists, recalls their time together inside and outside prison.

In a talk co-organized by the assassinated activist Lokman Slim, former Syrian political prisoner Yassin al-Haj Saleh argues that “the politics of prison” are central to understanding the “politicide” of the Syrian people at the Assad regime’s hands.

In a previously-unpublished interview from 2019, the late Lokman Slim—assassinated last week—and his wife Monika Borgmann discuss living in Hezbollah’s Beirut; their film about Syria’s notorious Tadmor prison; the nature of political violence; and the question of fear.

Lebanon awoke Thursday to the gruesome news that Lokman Slim, an outspoken Hezbollah critic and pillar of civil society, had been assassinated in his car.

[Editor’s note: This article was originally published in Arabic on 30 April, 2018] To refer to the Assad regime in Syria as “dictatorial” is a great mistake—indeed, it is the mother of intellectual, political, ethical, and human rights-related errors perpetrated against Syrians at the international level. The Assadist state is based on extermination, not mere “repression,” and as such it is a universal problem rather…

[Editor’s note: The below article was produced as part of Al-Jumhuriya’s 2017 Fellowship for Young Writers. It was written by Wa’el Abd al-Hamid based on the testimony of a man named Shams al-Din. It was originally published in Arabic on 19 April, 2018.] (1) My name is Shams. I’m fifteen years old, and I really hate my name. I don’t know why my parents decided…

Mustafa Khalifa’s largely autobiographical, newly-translated novel The Shell, set in Syria’s infamous Tadmor prison, vividly captures the absurdity and ultrasadism that are the Assad regime’s lifeblood, writes Robin Yassin-Kassab.