Abducted Filmmaker Freed by Syrian Government

Soon after the filmmaker Orwa Nyrabia was abducted by the Syrian military, filmmakers all over the world protested his detention. Martin Scorsese issued a statement calling for his release; that was followed by a campaign by more than a hundred international filmmakers to call attention to Nyrabia’s detention. He was held for three weeks by military intelligence in an underground prison, he said, thrown together with 84 younger Syrians, most of them conscripts apparently reluctant to shoot fellow Syrians.