06-01-2012<\/p>\n
The young Syrian filmmaker Bassel Shahade<\/strong> was shot dead<\/a> by a sniper in the Bab Saba district of Homs two days ago. Shahade studied photography in the United States before returning to Syria at the start of the popular uprising.<\/p>\n For the past three months the talented photographer and filmmaker had been covering the clashes in Homs and was one of the principal citizen journalists reporting on, among other things, the shelling of the Baba Amr district in February. His assistant and fellow director, Ahmed Assam<\/strong>, was also killed.<\/p>\n Two days earlier, three media activists of the Sham News Network<\/em><\/a> (SNN<\/em>) were shot dead by government forces in the Khaldieh district of Homs. The circumstances of their deaths are still unclear:<\/p>\n Reporters Without Borders has also learned of arrests on 27 May of two journalists, Mohamed Omar Al-Khatib<\/strong> and filmmaker Bilal Ahmed Bilal<\/strong>, by air force intelligence in Damascus.<\/p>\n Al-Khatib was arrested after being shot and wounded. Reporters Without Borders is concerned about his medial condition. According to our information, Bilal was reported to have been taken from the capital’s Mezzeh airport to Sednaya prison. Both journalists had already been detained by syrian security in the past year.<\/p>\n The writer Khaled Khalifa<\/strong>, author of “In Praise of Hatred<\/a>” published in 2006, was arrested on 25 May while he was attending a funeral and released three days later<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n