The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights

Included in the “pardon” | Journalist “Kinan Wakaf” released from prison after three months

Regime forces released the journalist of “Al-Thawra newspaper” “Kinan Wakaf” after being arrested for three months, where he was arrested in early February for “criticising the regime’s government and officials openly on his Facebook page.”

According to reliable SOHR sources, “Al-Wakaf” was released in the last presidential pardon, after being criminalized according to the law of General Penal.

On February 8, reliable sources informed SOHR that a regime security force stormed a house of a pro-regime journalist in “Al-Thawrah newspaper” in Tartous town, to search for the hidden journalist “Kenan Waqqaf” who works for a state-run “Al-Wehda newspaper” who had appeared in a video tanking about regime security service raid on his house to arrest him. It is worth noting that the journalist was not at home at the time of the raid.
On February 5, Syrian Observatory obtained video footage showing a pro-regime journalist called “Kenan Waqqaf”, who works for a state-run “Al-Wehda newspaper” and lives in Tartous city, who reports outside his home that a heavily armed security force surrounded his house and stormed it in order to arrest him while he was outside the house.
These forces deal with the situation as if they come in order to arrest a member of “ISIS,” not a journalist, “according to the journalist description.”
In this video, he demanded that his children be taken care of, in case an unpleasant event would happen or if anything happened to him.
The journalist previously publicly criticised the regime’s government and officials in posts in his Facebook profile in light of the country’s difficult living and economic conditions that plague the people.
It is worth noting that this Journalist was arrested twice during 2020 and 2021. In March 2021, the journalist was arrested from the office of Al-Wehda newspaper in Tartous, after publishing a Facebook post in which he condemned and spoke about the kidnapping of a civilian by the son of the governor of Al-Hasakah for the purpose of collecting a ransom.
In September 2020, he was arrested for publishing a press investigation of Al-Wehda newspaper on his personal account concerning matters of military service and corruption in state institutions.