Early on the morning of December 8, Suhail AlGhazi did the unthinkable: He spoke with his family in Syria openly, and without fear.

AlGhazi fled Syria in 2013 after taking part in early protests against the regime of Bashar al-Assad and surviving two brutal and terrifying stints in prison. Now living in Europe, he has spent the past decade working in support of the opposition, publishing commentary and maintaining a lively and at times belligerent presence on X, formerly Twitter.

Despite the relative safety of exile, he kept his identity hidden. Many members of his extended family still lived in and around Damascus, and he feared that his activism — or even speaking with them about anything resembling politics — would make them a target.

The Assad family controlled Syria for 53 years through a constellation of 17 intelligence agencies, instilling terror at home and at times reaching out beyond the borders of Syria to silence critics abroad. In recent years, the regime’s secret police were accused of attacks on Syrian dissidents in Germany and lured a prominent exile back to Syria with false promises of reconciliation, only to throw him in prison upon his arrival. (His emaciated body was discovered this week.) Families of dissidents or rebel fighters were often made to denounce their loved ones or face imprisonment.

So for many activists, both home and abroad, anonymity was a necessity, said Suhaib Zaino, a co-founder of the online magazine Hurriya.

“The Assad regime doesn’t just go after people inside the country,” Zaino told The Intercept, speaking under his full name for the first time. “They can also hurt people outside the country by hurting their relatives inside Syria.”

AlGhazi, wishing to protect his loved ones, had never once discussed politics with his family on the inside. Even in the days and hours leading up to the regime’s collapse, as rebel forces closed in on the capital, the fear was so pervasive and habitual that he and his relatives continued to censor themselves, speaking in generalities in conversations........

© The Intercept