NEWPALMYRA Mourns Bassel Khartabil

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

In August 2017, NEWPALMYRA and the global open-culture community mourned Bassel Khartabil after reports that he had been executed by the Syrian government following five years in detention.

Bassel began documenting Palmyra in 2005 and his vision — open, shareable reconstruction of Syrian heritage — shaped the project that launched publicly as NEWPALMYRA in 2015. The community continues that work in his memory.

Contemporaneous coverage appears throughout the Press archive. See also known archive gaps.