The once-uplifting story of Amina Abdullah, the voice behind the blog “A Gay Girl in Damascus,” recently took a turn for the worse.
The Syrian-American blogger was kidnapped yesterday by several armed, unidentified men in Damascus who seized her and forced her into a car. Abdullah’s cousin, Rania Ismail, alerted the public of this development in a post added to Abdullah’s blog Monday evening.
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According to the post, “The men are assumed to be members of one of the security services or the Baath Party militia.” Syrian security forces have detained thousands since the beginning of protests earlier this year. In an update post, Ismail adds that “there are at least 18 different police formations in Syria as well as multiple different party militias and gangs,” a reality that makes identifying the kidnappers very difficult.
Amina’s family does not know of her whereabouts, and asks anyone with leads to contact them. “We are hoping she is simply in jail and nothing worse has happened to her,” Ismail writes. She does, however, offer one piece of grimly optimistic news: “We believe that she is likely to be released fairly soon. If they wanted to kill her, they would have done so.”
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