On January 18, 2026, German journalist
Eva Maria Michelmann
and her Kurdish-Turkish colleague
Ahmed Polad
were detained while reporting from the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, as government forces advanced on the territory controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). After months of denying knowledge, authorities admitted holding them in custody.
Michelmann, who had lived in Syria since 2022 and reported for the Istanbul-based socialist
Etkin News Agency (ETHA)
, spent five months in detention, where she was interrogated and accused of having ties to Kurdish armed groups, denied access to a lawyer and the outside world, and held alongside women bearing the signs of what she described as torture. She was
released
on June 19, however, no recent official information regarding Polad — who was working as a producer and reporter for ETHA and
Özgür TV
— has been made available.
The arrest of Michelmann and Polad has become an early test of Syria’s commitment to press freedom under its transitional authorities. Although officials pledged to uphold freedom of the press after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government in 2024, journalists
continue
to face attacks, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, censorship, and legal restrictions.
Omar Haj Ahmed, director general of press affairs at Syria’s Ministry of Information, disputed several elements of Michelmann’s account. He told CPJ that she was detained in Raqqa and later transferred to Aleppo, and denied that she had been held in detention facilities in Idlib or Damascus, apart from being taken to Damascus on the day of her handover to German authorities. He also rejected Michelmann’s account that she had been in Raqqa solely to report, alleging that Syrian authorities had identified her as an SDF affiliated, and that she lacked documents proving she was working as a journalist. CPJ requested but was not provided with the records he cited, and could not independently verify thos
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