activist

Haitham al-Maleh

هيثم المالح

Also known as: Haitham Maleh • the dean of Syrian human rights

Journeys

Haitham al-Maleh: Syria's Human Rights Conscience, Jailed Twice Across Fifty Years

Haitham al-Maleh's story spans the entire Assad era — from Hafez's early consolidation of power through Bashar's crackdown on the 2011 revolution. He is not a dissident who appeared with the uprising. He was working, defending, and being imprisoned for decades before most of Syria's revolutionary generation was born.

Biography

Haitham al-Maleh spent his life defending people in Assad's courts and paying for it in Assad's prisons. First jailed under Hafez al-Assad in the early 1980s for seven years without trial, he was arrested again in October 2009 at the age of seventy-eight — after giving a television interview criticising the government — and sentenced to three years. He was released in March 2011 as protests began. Syria's oldest political prisoner by that measure, he continued working from abroad after leaving Syria. He is among the most important symbols of Syria's decades-long human rights movement.

Documentation Status

VerificationConfirmed

Journeys1

Key Facts

Born:1931-01-01

Place:Damascus, Syria

Nationality:Syrian