Bassel Khartabil Arrested in Damascus

15 March 2012

The open Palmyra project loses its primary files; the community carries the work forward

Archive note (2026): This milestone item was added to the news archive from project records and press coverage during the site modernization.

On 15 March 2012, Syrian open-source advocate and Palmyra documentarian Bassel Khartabil was arrested in Damascus. He had been photographing and modeling Palmyra since 2005 with Al-Aous Publishers.

Bassel's detention interrupted the original project and the primary digital assets from 2005–2012 were lost. In the years that followed, collaborators, modelers, and archaeologists rebuilt the effort as a global open community — work that led to the public launch of NEWPALMYRA in October 2015.

See History & known gaps for how the archive documents this period.

Date	15 Mar 2012
Title	Bassel Khartabil Arrested in Damascus