Meanwhile, Syrian human rights lawyer Noura Ghazi Safadi has announced that her husband, prominent Syrian-Palestinian internet activist Bassel Khartabil, was executed by the Assad regime in 2015. The news of his death has sparked international outcry and mourning, particularly among internet activists. Khartabil was an open-source software programmer who fought for an open internet and helped Syrians evade regime censorship and surveillance. In 2012, Foreign Policy magazine listed him as the 19th most influential thinker of the year for “insisting, against all odds, on a peaceful Syrian revolution.” He was arrested by the Syrian military in 2012 in Damascus.