Bassel Khartabil, In Memoriam

August 3, 2017 7:03 AM

"Bassel Khartabil, the Syrian open source developer, blogger, entrepreneur, hackerspace founder, and free culture advocate, has been executed by the Syrian authorities." Khartabil had been imprisoned since March 2012; we now know that he was secretly executed in November 2015. English Wikipedia page for Bassel Khartabil, #FREEBASSEL campaign, The Cost of Freedom anthology.
posted by brainwane (29 comments total)

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posted by Gelatin at 7:19 AM on August 3, 2017

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posted by Etrigan at 7:32 AM on August 3, 2017

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What an inspirational figure and what a loss.
posted by biggreenplant at 7:36 AM on August 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

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posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:54 AM on August 3, 2017

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posted by louche mustachio at 7:57 AM on August 3, 2017

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posted by acb at 8:08 AM on August 3, 2017

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posted by dywypi at 8:13 AM on August 3, 2017

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posted by mixedmetaphors at 8:30 AM on August 3, 2017

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posted by What'sAPedantWalter? at 8:53 AM on August 3, 2017

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posted by brennen at 9:02 AM on August 3, 2017

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posted by allthinky at 9:34 AM on August 3, 2017

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Joi Ito has collected some of Bassel's artwork from when he was at Damascus Centrail Jail in 2015.
posted by waninggibbon at 9:38 AM on August 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

I started working at Creative Commons just a couple months after Bassel was arrested. It's been so strange, being around so many people who knew him very well as a real person, as he was in a situation that was so impossibly distant. I've thought about him almost every day.

And then he got moved to a new prison, and then he got moved again and nobody knew where, and the communications ended. I think everyone was sort of able to put two and two together, but it was still so, so heartbreaking when we got confirmation.

A couple years ago, some friends of Bassel put together a cookbook in his honor. Here's the tiny little thing I wrote for it.

I love this quote from Larry Lessig: “Mr. Khartabil isn’t a partisan, aligned with one Syrian faction against another. He represents a future, aligned against a totalitarian past.”

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posted by roll truck roll at 9:50 AM on August 3, 2017 [10 favorites]

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posted by clew at 10:10 AM on August 3, 2017

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posted by praemunire at 10:12 AM on August 3, 2017

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posted by Samizdata at 11:01 AM on August 3, 2017

"Of my experience spending three years in jail so far for writing open source code (mainly), I can tell you how much authoritarian regimes feel the dangers of technology on their continuity. And they should be afraid of that, as code is much more than tools. It's an education that opens youthful minds, and moves nations forward. Who can stop that? No-one... I'm in jail, but still have thousands if not millions of my hands and minds outside writing code and hacking and they will always keep doing that, no matter what stupid actions these regimes take to stop the motion.
As long as you people out there are doing what you are doing, my soul is free. Jail is only a temporary physical limitation."

Your story is not done.
posted by xarnop at 12:04 PM on August 3, 2017 [8 favorites]

Here are the letters Danny was quoting from.
posted by roll truck roll at 1:02 PM on August 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

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posted by Joe in Australia at 1:09 PM on August 3, 2017

An appalling, infuriating story.
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posted by spitbull at 3:56 PM on August 3, 2017

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posted by saysthis at 4:29 PM on August 3, 2017

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posted by one weird trick at 6:35 PM on August 3, 2017

01000110 01110101 01100011 01101011 00100000 01100001 01110011 01110011 01100001 01100100
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 6:36 PM on August 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

First they came for the Syrian Open Source developers.....
posted by grimjeer at 7:36 PM on August 3, 2017

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posted by galaxy rise at 9:03 PM on August 3, 2017

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posted by Mister Bijou at 3:30 AM on August 4, 2017

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posted by pjmoy at 4:12 AM on August 4, 2017

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posted by progosk at 5:30 AM on August 4, 2017

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posted by mirthe at 9:20 AM on August 5, 2017