Podcast: Why is Suleiman Khalil in prison in Syria?

Abi McDougal (00:02)

The book of Hebrews says to remember those who are in prison as though we were in prison with them. Today on the Christian Solidarity Podcast, we’re bringing you the story of one specific person in prison who we’d like you to remember. Suleiman Khalil, a Christian from Syria. And we’re inviting you to do more than to remember. Right now at our website, you have the opportunity to send an email directly to Syria’s foreign minister asking for Suleiman’s freedom. You’ll find a link to that webpage in our show notes. Syria is a country that CSI knows well. We’ve been working there for 12 years to help persecuted Christians and victims of Syria’s deadly civil war. It was through our work in Syria that we met Suleiman for the first time. Last December, with little warning, Syria’s 14-year civil war took a hard left turn. The Assad family had ruled Syria since 1970. In the space of just 11 days, the Assad dictatorship collapsed. The country’s new rulers were HTS, a jihadist group with its roots in Al-Qaeda. Today, Syria is at a turning point. Assad’s architecture of fear has collapsed, Economic sanctions have been lifted. Many Syrians see this moment as the best chance at freedom that they have had in many decades. At the same time, Syria’s new rulers seem to be concentrating power in their own hands. Pro-government forces have massacred thousands of Druzes and Alawite Muslims, and Christians also come under attack in the new Syria. Meanwhile, Assad’s prisons are starting to fill up again. Caught in the middle of all this is one man. Suleiman Khalil. Joining us today to talk about Suleiman is CSI’s Director of Advocacy, Joel Veldkamp. Joel, welcome.

Joel Veldkamp (01:55)

Good morning, Abi

Abi McDougal (01:56)

So let’s start with the basics. Tell us about who Suleiman Khalil is.

Joel Veldkamp (02:01)

Suleiman Khalil is the former mayor of a town in Syria called Sadad in Homs province. is an ancient town that’s actually mentioned in the Bible probably once or twice and nearly the entire population is Syriac Orthodox Christians. Suleiman Khalil was not a member of the ruling party in Syria but after the revolution began in Syria in 2011 the Syrian dictatorship felt like they had to give a little more space to opposition parties. As part of that wave of slightly, slightly opening up, Suleiman Khalil was allowed to be elected as mayor of Sadad in 2012.

A year later, Sadad came under attack by Jihadist forces, a coalition of ISIS, of an al-Qaeda-linked group called Jabhat al-Nusra and other rebel fighters. And they occupied the town for a week, and during that week they killed 41 Christians, including some women, some children. There was a whole family that was murdered and stuffed into a well and only discovered after government troops forced the rebels to retreat a week later. So, Suleiman saw firsthand the threat to his people posed by the jihadist movement in Syria.

Two years later, the jihadists came back. This time it was just ISIS, the Islamic State. This is about the height of their campaign of terror in Iraq and Syria, and they were making a drive towards Damascus to overthrow the government, and Sadad was really on the way. And they attacked the city, and there was a real chance of a massacre, something that even worse than what happened in 2013, of maybe hundreds or thousands of Christians being killed by ISIS.

But Suleiman Khalil, the mayor, was able to organize the townspeople to put up a defense against ISIS’s attack long enough to make a difference. And ISIS was not able to enter the town and the town was basically saved. And because of that, he became very popular. Suleiman became like a local folk and the Assad dictatorship did not like that at all. And the next year they forced him out of as mayor. So that’s who us he’s a hero of the Syrian civil war.

Abi McDougal (04:23)

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So in many cases where CSI is supporting people who have been imprisoned, they’re referred to us by a local partner, the case is shared by someone who knows them directly. But in this case, CSI staff and leadership have actually known Suleiman himself for many years now. Can you talk a bit about that relationship and how CSI got to know him in the first place?

Joel Veldkamp (04:48)

That’s right. Yeah. So back in 2016, a CSI team met Suleiman Khalil in person in Sadad. And over the next few years, we visited him a few different times and just got to know him, to know his family. He was a representative of the local Christian community in that area. And we were very interested to know about what had happened in Sadad when the Islamic State had attacked both in 2013 and 2015. he was a host for our team. we’ve stayed in touch ever since. And in December, when the Assad regime collapsed in these 11 days, he was communicating with us and he was actually quite happy. He was rejoicing with rest of Syria at the collapse of the Assad dictatorship.

Abi McDougal (05:33)

Yeah, I think you’ve told me you got a voice message from him after that or CSI got a voice message where he was laughing with, you know, excitement and celebration at the collapse of the Assad regime. that right?

Joel Veldkamp (05:47)

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that’s one of my clearest memories from those days when everything seemed like it was happening so fast. But I remember that very joyful message from Suleiman.

Abi McDougal (05:58)

So then what happened to then lead to him getting imprisoned in February?

Joel Veldkamp (06:04)

To be honest, we still don’t know exactly what happened. But what we do know is on February 8 of this year, security agents from the new Syrian regime, which as you said is controlled by HTS, this jihadist group with roots in al-Qaeda, security agents from this regime came to Suleiman’s house in Sadad. searched the whole house for weapons. They found nothing, obviously, because Suleiman is a civilian. they arrested him took him to prison in Homs, which is the third biggest city in Syria.

And since then, he’s been held without charge. He hasn’t had any access to a lawyer, is in direct violation of the new Syrian constitutional declaration that Syria’s new president issued in March. And he’s had very, very limited contact with his family. So we really don’t know if did he run afoul of someone in the new government. But one also has to wonder, you know, the current government, these men are the ones who ordered the attack on Sadad in 2013. It was Jabhat al-Nusra that attacked Sadad in 2013 and Jabhat al-Nusra, now called HTS, took over the country in December. So one has to wonder if Suleiman is actually being punished for defending a Christian town against jihadists.

Abi McDougal (07:28)

Yeah, and so there’s been a regime change, obviously, in the past year that’s upended of the expectations of what used to be normal for Syria. But for years, Syria’s prisons have been associated with disappearances, with torture, with terror. What does it mean for someone like Suleiman to be imprisoned in Syria?

Joel Veldkamp (07:49)

Yeah, it’s extremely serious. Prisons are places where people are tortured, where there’s often very little ventilation, very little light, very little access to medical care or to good food. This is how it was for decades and decades under Assad’s dictatorship and the dictatorships that came before it. And there’s really no reason to think that it’s really changed.

And it’s extremely worrying that no one has really been able to visit Suleiman to see how he’s doing. It’s in the shadows that extreme human rights violations can take place. we’re extremely concerned about Suleiman’s state in prison. We don’t have any information about how he’s doing because no information is available, that in itself is extremely, extremely worrying.

Abi McDougal (08:32)

Right. Well, and I mean, if there are no charges, there’s not a case, there’s not a, you know, line of communication to follow up on or to address. It sounds very much like there’s just a full removal that sounds more like an abduction than imprisonment, right?

Joel Veldkamp (08:49)

Yeah, absolutely. It’s a state-led abduction.

Abi McDougal (08:52)

And so looking more generally, what has the situation been for Christians in Syria and for religious minorities in general since the collapse of the Assad dictatorship in December?

Joel Veldkamp (09:04)

So when HTS took over the country in December, they were very careful. They worked very hard to reassure Alawite Muslims, Druzes, Christians, Ismailis, that they had nothing to fear. And that was the number one argument for Assad’s rule, right? He was a butcher, he was a dictator, he was a mass murderer, but he would always say, if the jihadists take over, they will persecute religious minorities, right? The country needs me to keep people safe. And so HTS was very careful not to persecute religious minorities during their takeover.

But that really changed in a big way in March. In March, government forces organized the massacre of thousands of Alawite civilians in the Syrian coastal region, in Latakia province, Tartus, Hama. In July, they launched a similar massacre against the Druzes in Suwayda in southern Syria. And these are extremely, extremely worrisome developments.

It’s not just the death toll, but it’s the way the killings took place with calls to jihad echoing from mosques and with sectarian rhetoric, calling Alawites and Druzes infidels and pigs and other hateful terms. This is… pre-genocidal activity, we can say this is how genocides happen. People are dehumanized, people are grouped together based on religious or racial characteristics, and then people are killed. So the situation in Syria is very bad right now. The Druzes have their own militias that are protecting them, that were able to stave off the government assault in July. Alawites don’t really have that, or they have it on a much lower scale. So many Alawite women are being abducted, disappearing. Alawites are being driven out of their homes throughout the country in Damascus, in Hama province. Many are leaving the country altogether.

Christians have it better so far. The new government seems to know that direct attacks on Christians would really get the attention of the West and the new government needs the support of the West to survive. But the police… in Syria now are basically former jihadists and they are not always very disciplined. Sometimes they harass women who aren’t covering their hair, especially Christian women. Sometimes they harass people who sell alcohol.

Something that’s completely new in Syrian history is on June 22nd, there was a massacre at a church in Damascus. A suicide bomber walked into a mass and blew himself up. killed between 25 and 30 people. The government probably was not responsible for that, but the government reaction was very telling. The Syrian president refused to call the victims of the attack martyrs. He refused to go to the funeral. He refused to visit the church. Very much communicating that Christians have a second class status in new Syria. So Suleiman’s detention is kind of a part of this bigger picture

Abi McDougal (11:43)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Veldkamp (12:09)

where the space for political freedom is closing in Syria, where the space to be a non-Muslim is closing in Syria. Suleiman is a strong, popular, Christian political leader, and it seems like that’s something that the new government can’t tolerate. Abi McDougal (12:17) Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So what has CSI already done to help free Suleiman?

Joel Veldkamp (12:33)

We’ve working back channels basically. We’ve sent private communications to the Secretary of State in the US, Marco Rubio. We sent a letter to Syria’s new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa. We’ve had some responses from the U.S. State Department. They’re aware of the situation. no response from the Syrian government whatsoever, of course.

In July, we went to the UN Human Rights Council and had an event about the situation for religious minorities in Syria. And there we were able to tell Suleiman’s story in full and also to deliver a letter from his daughter, Natalie, to the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen

[Natalie’s video message plays]

So we’ve been working to make this case known official channels, but now we’re moving to a second phase of this campaign. We want… Christians all around the world and people who support human rights all around the world to take action themselves for Suleiman.

We’ve launched a campaign on our website. People can go there and they can send an email to Syria’s foreign minister about Suleiman. The email is pre-written for you. It has his national ID number. It has his date of birth. It has all the details of his case. You can add some of your own thoughts if you like. We of course ask you to be respectful. But we’re asking everyone, really, who supports CSI, supports religious minorities in Syria, to take a stand for Suleiman Khalil.

It’s quite hard to get good information out of Syria these days. Maybe a little easier than it was under the Assad dictatorship, but still a challenge. And there are many reports of people disappearing or being arrested without charge and held, but they’re quite hard to verify. Suleiman Khalil’s case, we know. We know Suleiman Khalil, we’re in direct contact with his family. We know what’s happened to him. We know where he is. So this is a concrete case that we can use to pressure the Syrian government to act justly hopefully to make things better for everyone in Syria. If we can get the Syrian government to back down on this case, that opens up space for other people who are advocating for their loved ones who have been detained by the new government.

Abi McDougal (17:18)

Hmm, yeah. Yeah, thank you so much for putting that into context for us, right? The of this case in the broader landscape of what’s happening in Syria right now. And so just to drill in on that a little bit more, why does CSI think Suleiman’s case is important?

Joel Veldkamp (17:38)

Yeah, we think this is really a test for the new Syrian government. This is a man who was not a part of the Assad regime. He was not a combatant in the civil war. His only crime, as far as we can tell, is that he successfully defended a Christian town against a jihadist attack as mayor. So if there’s no place for him in the new Syria, that really means there’s no place for any kind of political opposition. Maybe no place for anyone who’s not a Sunni Muslim who follows HTS’s interpretation of Sharia law. And that would be an enormous tragedy for Syria. Syria is a country that has been renowned for its religious diversity for a millennium.

So this is… This is a test case. If we can get Suleiman free, if we can create space for people like Suleiman to speak out, to engage in politics, to organize their communities, there’s a much better chance that Syria in the future could be a free country, or at least a country where Christians are able to live in freedom. If not, it’s really hard to see how we go forward.

Abi McDougal (18:57)

Yeah, it’s an important moment to take action and to see how we can support right now the people of Syria and brothers and sisters in Christ who are saying, you know, this is important, these safeguards need to be in place for the future of Syria. Joel, is there anything else you want to say before we close?

Joel Veldkamp (19:18)

Yeah, I think the Syrian government really thinks that no one is paying attention to Suleiman Khalil right now. And if we can show them that actually there are thousands of people around the world in countries that Syria is going to depend on for its recovery from the war, who do care about Suleiman Khalil, that could make a difference. This is not an impossible quest. This is not a fantasy. We could get this man out of prison. So please do take action and share it with your friends.

Abi McDougal (19:48)

Thank you Joel so much for taking the time to talk with us. Thank you for your explanations and digging into this. Thank you so much. If anyone has questions listening or comments, we’d love to hear from you. And of course, we hope that everyone listening will take action and sign the petition. It’s on CSI’s website at CSI-INT.org. And if you look under Campaigns, you can find the petition to reach out directly and send messages to Syria’s foreign minister saying, Hey, there are people paying attention and caring about this, there are people around the world who are standing together and advocating for religious freedom.

Abi McDougal (20:44)

That’s all for this episode. You can read more online at CSI-INT.org about CSI’s work supporting aid and advocacy all around the world. If this episode was valuable to you, hit subscribe so that you can stay informed about updates as they come out. I’m Abi McDougal and this is the Christian Solidarity Podcast. Thanks for listening.