Unknown fate of Saeed Malki after 6 years of detention
Qamishli – North-Press Agency
Six years have passed since the deputy chairman of the Syrian Syriac Union Party Saeed Malki has been arrested, whose fate is still unknown.
Malki was arrested by the Syrian government security forces at Qamishli airport, on August 12, 2013, as he was heading to the Syrian capital, Damascus.
Sanharib Barsoum, the head of the Syriac Union Party in Syria, told North-Press that the party demanded the release of Malki right from the first day of his arrest “through local and international intermediaries as well as through international organizations.”
“Not long after his arrest, we received a death document issued by a hospital in Damascus through a Christian cleric, yet, the Syrian government neither confirmed nor denied the news,” Barsoum added.
Soon after receiving the death document, Malki’s family went to Damascus to ask for his body, but they were responded that the burial area is out of Syrian government scope of control.
In a related context, the Syriac Union Party in Syria issued an official statement in which it addressed a letter to international organizations and Mr. Geir Pederson, the UN special envoy to Syria, to intervene in accordance with the efforts exerted in the humanitarian file and the file of detainees and abductees, to help reach the truth of the fate of Saeed Malki.
For his part, the head of the Syriac World Union Party Ibrahim Murad has demanded in a statement today, the disclosure of Malki’s fate.
“Malki’s arrest was arbitrary and for reasons due to his demand for freedom and rights of his people and the entire Syrian people by purely peaceful means,” said Ibrahim Murad.
“Today we renew our call to the Syriac Patriarchs to intervene again with the Syrian authorities to release our companion no matter what his fault was. And so, we call on the United Nations to intervene to uncover the secret prisons and mass graves, to end the suffering of tens of thousands of Syrian and Lebanese peoples, and to turn over the pages of pain and injustice that they have endured together,” Malki added.
Saeed Malki was born in Hasakah in 1960, following the death of his father, he migrated with his mother and his only sister to the Turkish city of Midyat, his mother’s birthplace, he later settled in Switzerland.
In 2005, Malki founded the Syriac Cultural Association and served as the head of the Syriac Union Party in Syria. He became the deputy chairman in 2011 and Syria Square official in charge of the National Council of Bethnahrin until he was arrested on August 12, 2013.