Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari, an out lesbian blogger from Damascus, Syria, was seized by three men earlier today, her cousin wrote on her blog, 'A Gay Girl in Damascus', earlier today:
Amina told the friend that she would go ahead and they were separated.Amina had, apparently, identified the person she was to meet. However, while her companion was still close by, Amina was seized by three men in their early 20's. According to the witness (who does not want her identity known), the men were armed. Amina hit one of them and told the friend to go find her father.
One of the men then put his hand over Amina's mouth and they hustled her into a red Dacia Logan with a window sticker of Basel Assad. The witness did not get the tag number. She promptly went and found Amina's father.
The men are assumed to be members of one of the security services or the Baath Party militia. Amina's present location is unknown and it is unclear if she is in a jail or being held elsewhere in Damascus.
Later, it was updated:
I have been on the telephone with both her parents and all that we can say right now is that she is missing. Her father is desperately trying to find out where she is and who has taken her.
Unfortunately, there are at least 18 different police formations in Syria as well as multiple different party militias and gangs. We do not know who took her so we do not know who to ask to get her back. It is possible that they are forcibly deporting her.
From other family members who have been imprisoned there, we believe that she is likely to be released fairly soon. If they wanted to kill her, they would have done so.
That is what we are all praying for.
This was the first I knew of Abdallah and her blog. The Guardian profiled her a few weeks ago.
A Facebook page has quickly sprouted up for Abdallah, a dual citizen who was born in Virginia to an American mother and a Syrian father and, at six months, moved to Syria, where she has relatives in the government and the Muslim Brotherhood (the photo above comes from Facebook, though we can't confirm its authenticity).
