Zakariya Rashid Hassan al-Ashiri

Who was Zakariya Rashid Hassan al-Ashiri?

Zakariya Rashid Hassan al-Ashiri, also spelled Al Asheri and Aushayri, was a forty-year-old Bahraini blogger and journalist, worked as an editor and writer for a local blog news website in Al Dair, Bahrain. He was killed on April 9, 2011 while in custody of the Bahraini Government. al-Ashiri was the first journalist in Bahrain to die in direct relation to his work since The Committee to Protect Journalists started keeping records in 1992, and he was the first to die in the Bahraini uprising.

al-Ashiri was also the second blogger-journalist worldwide to have been killed for his blogging. al-Ashiri follows the death two years earlier of Iranian Omid Reza Mir Sayafi, who was the first blogger to have been known to be killed for his publication. Two months after al-Ashiri, Brazilian blogger Edinaldo Filgueira was killed in June 2011.