Noura Ghazi

Noura Ghazi (نورة غازي), or Noura Ghazi Safadi (نورة غازي صفدي) (born 30 September 1981) is a Syrian human rights lawyer and activist. Her husband, the Syrian-Palestinian Bassel Khartabil (Arabic: باسل خرطبيل), or Bassel Safadi (Arabic: باسل صفدي) was an open-source software developer and one of Syria's leading pro-free speech and democracy activists. He was arrested by the Syrian government in 2012 and executed in 2015.

Life

Ghazi had an early introduction to human rights violations against political prisoners when her father, a political dissident, was arrested when she was still a child. She used to visit him in Adra prison in Damascus and attend his trial hearings. When she was only 12 years old she swore that she would become a lawyer and defend prisoners of conscience. Ghazi studied law at Damascus University.

Ghazi met her husband Bassel Khartabil Safadi in April 2011 at a protest in Douma against Bashar al-Assad’s autocratic rule. On 15 March 2012, Khartabil was detained by the Syrian government at Adra Prison. In the first week of 2013, Ghazi and Khartabil got married. The wedding took place over two prison visits: the first time, Ghazi and Khartabil exchanged vows. On the second visit, Ghazi was accompanied by her uncle, a lawyer, and the marriage was officially approved. The couple worked more than a year on this book together, between Ghazi choosing texts, and smuggling them into prison one by one when visiting Khartabil, and him translating them into English. established in 2017 as the first female-led advocacy group for Syrian detainees and their relatives. With most of the people disappearing in the country male, it is women who bear the burden of their absence.

In 2018, Ghazi was named by Amnesty International as one of the "8 kick-ass women standing up for our rights”.