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Father Paolo's legacy remains even 12 years after disappearance in Syria

Father Paolo's legacy remains even 12 years after disappearance in Syria

Bassel Shehadeh, Rama al-Asas, Rania al-Abbassi, Ali Moustafa, Samira al-Khalil, Mazen Hamada... All are among the hundreds of thousands of 'martyrs' of the Syrian revolution. Most were kidnapped or murdered by the Assad regime, others by armed opposition groups. On July 28, using a blue marker, their relatives wrote their names on wooden boards before planting them at the foot of olive trees in the valley of Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi, the sixth-century monastery that had been abandoned for a long time and was rediscovered in the early 1980s by Italian Jesuit Father Paolo Dall'Oglio.Since his abduction by the Islamic State group in Raqqa on July 29, 2013, this is the first year that his name and ideas can be publicly mentioned in his adopted homeland. From our archives In Syria, families of the disappeared on a long march for truth ...
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