activist

Tal al-Mallouhi

طل الملوحي

Also known as: Tal Mallouhi

Journeys

Tal al-Mallouhi: Syria Jailed a Teenage Poet and Called Her a Spy

Tal al-Mallouhi was arrested before the revolution, when Syria was still the kind of country where a blogger could become Syria's youngest political prisoner simply for writing honestly. Her case became a symbol — of the regime's fear of words, and of what happened to ordinary Syrians who trusted that language was a safer form of resistance than the street.

Biography

Tal al-Mallouhi was a Syrian student blogger who was arrested in December 2009 at the age of eighteen. She wrote poetry and essays on her blog about Palestinian rights and Syrian daily life — nothing explicitly political by any normal standard. She was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of passing information to a foreign state, a verdict her family and international observers rejected as fabricated. Her detention made her, at the time of sentencing, one of the youngest political prisoners in the world. She was released in 2014 but remained in Syria under conditions her family has never fully disclosed.

Documentation Status

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Journeys1

Key Facts

Born:1991-01-01

Place:Syria

Nationality:Syrian