Firas al-Barjas will have been held for a month on 8 January. The SDF – a military alliance formed by Syrian Kurds and the armed wing of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) – arrested him at his home in Raqqa on 8 December. It accuses him of collaborating with the government established in Damascus after Bashar al-Assad’s fall, with which there is continuing tension over control of the northeast.

“The press office of the Ministry of Information is closely monitoring the case of journalist Firas al-Barjas,” Syrian Deputy Information Minister Obada Koujan said in Facebook post, calling for his release. The SDF did not respond to RSF’s request for comment about his detention.

Firas al-Barjas had feared he could be arrested, one of his close colleagues told RSF. Two colleagues at Sawt al-Hayat, an AANES-affiliated radio station, had already been briefly detained on suspicion of leaking information to the Damascus authorities. According to the information obtained by RSF, his work as a contributor to independent media outlets was the reason for the charges against him. He previously worked for the Hawar News agency and Ronahi TV.

He was initially held for ten days in an intelligence agency building in Raqqa, where he was beaten and subjected to brutal interrogations, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) and a source close to the journalist. The SNHR says he was transferred to a cell at the military court in the city of Kobani (called Ain al-Arab in Arabic) on 16 December. His family has not been allowed any contact with him at any point since his arrest.

“The Syrian Democratic Forces must release Firas al-Barjas at once. This journalist should never have been arrested, and the Kurdish authorities controlling northeastern Syria must be held accountable for this blatant obstruction of a journalist’s work.

The SDF monitor media activity closely in the region they control in northeastern Syria and arrested three journalists in the first three months of 2021. The SDF are also believed to have been responsible for the death of a reporter in 2012.