Mahmoud al-Harbi al-Kafri, a 37-year-old Syrian journalist who co-founded the local Daraa 24 news outlet, was killed on November 10, 2023, when two assassins shot at his car after group of men intercepted it on a road in the Syrian village of Maaraba, near Damascus, according to multiple news reports, Beirut-based press freedom group SKeyes, and a recent investigation by journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories.
A video of the attack shows al-Harbi stepping out of his car and arguing with a group of gunmen before he is shot.
Forbidden Stories’ investigation found that 10 days before his death, al-Harbi had reported that a local family was allegedly involved in the trafficking of Captagon, a synthetic drug.
Daraa 24’s website reported that Syrian Mohammed Aref Abbas was convicted of first-degree murder in the case and sentenced to death in Daraa on March 2, 2024, but said that he later escaped from jail.
CPJ reached out to Mohammed Al-Asmmar, a foreign affairs officer at the Syrian Ministry of Information, on February 17, 2025, via messaging app to ask if there were any efforts in the new Syrian administration, which took office after the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, to re-investigate the killing or attempt to find the killer who had escaped, but didn’t receive a response.
Al-Harbi was included in CPJ’s list of killed journalists for the first time this year after Forbidden Stories and several media outlets detailed the link between his journalism and his murder.