Not much is known about his life except that he was a native of Basra.
Ammar Abadah Nasser al-Wa'eli | Tarak Ben Ammar | Michael Ammar | Ammar Abdulhamid | Faisal Basri | Driss Basri | Ammar Souayah |
12 March 2006: Arrested by the Syrian security forces at Damascus International Airport, as he was coming back from two conferences on human rights and democratic reforms in Syria, which were held in Paris and Washington D.C. He was then brought to the “Palestine Branch” of the military intelligence services, in Damascus, a place known for its extremely harsh conditions of detention.
In February 2007, another Deputy Health Minister, Hakim al-Zamili, and General Hamid al-Shammari, were both arrested on suspicion they had played a role in Saffar and others' kidnappings.
In 1979, Driss Basri was promoted to the post of Interior Minister in the government of Ahmed Osman, a post he held in all successive governments until 1999.
The logo "R4BIA" is a symbolic representation of the name "Rabia", which is the name of a Muslim saint Rabia Al-Adawiya, also called Rabia Basri, after which a mosque in Cairo around which the sit-in was held is named.