Syrian TV show uses photo of dead activist

LONDON - A Syrian state-produced television series has drawn fire from activists and Syrian opposition figures, for using as a prop a photograph of a young woman believed to have been tortured and killed by Syrian regime security forces.

The period of Ramadan is usually the peak time for TV audiences across the Arab world, but viewership figures are even higher than normal this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Historically, shows produced in Syria have been a mainstay on screens across the region, but the country's entertainment industry has taken a heavy hit due to the civil war that has been ongoing since 2011.

Financial pressures and increased government censorship has meant that privately-owned production companies are forced to create lower-quality shows. Meanwhile, many states in the region have boycotted locally-produced series on the grounds that they are funded by the Assad regime and solely reflect the viewpoint of the Syrian government.

Shows aired in recent years have drawn fire for parroting Syrian regime propaganda, including depicting a volunteer rescue group staging a chemical weapons attack and depicting chemical attack victims as actors. Syrian state propaganda, as well as that of its ally Russia, presents charges of chemical attacks by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces as fabricated and part of a Western plot for regime change in Syria.

The Syrian regime has also faced charges of arbitrarily detaining, torturing and murdering civilians and opposition figures. A show created for the current Ramadan season has caused outrage for using the photograph of a young woman whose death while in the regime's custody was revealed by a military defector known under the codename "Caesar", who smuggled thousands of photographs out of Syria in 2013.

The series, entitled "Interview with Mr. Adam," presents crimes being investigated by a "global forensics specialist" called Adam Abdel Haq, played by Syrian actor Ghassan Massoud. Massoud is known to audiences in the West for playing the role of Saladin in the 2005 historical drama "Kingdom of Heaven". The show is airing on multiple state-run and pro-government television channels including Syria Drama TV and the Syrian Satellite Channel.

In one scene where the characters are discussing the case of an unidentified murder victim, a brief still shows a photograph of the body of Rehab Allawi, a civil engineering student and activist originally from the town of Deir Ezzor, who was seized from her family home in Damascus and disappeared by Syrian military police in 2013.

The photograph of Allawi's corpse that was used in the show was the same as the one leaked by Caesar, showing the words "215 branch" written on a piece of paper draped across her forehead, in reference to the division of Syria's Military Intelligence Directorate where she was imprisoned.

Allawi's photograph was the only one of a woman among the files released by Caesar concerning murdered and disappeared detainees. The Syrian government denies torturing civilians; state security told Allawi's family that her death was due to a stroke she suffered while in custody. The family was given conflicting information concerning her whereabouts, received no death certificate and was unable to confirm her death until the leak of the photograph.

Assad himself has previously ridiculed the Caesar files, referring to them as "allegations without evidence" in an interview with Foreign Affairs magazine. UN investigators and rights activists, however, say the Syrian authorities have arrested and tortured tens of thousands of people since the conflict began in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.

In April, two former Syrian intelligence officers went on trial in Germany for crimes against humanity, in the first court case worldwide over state-sponsored torture by the Syrian regime.