So it was a shock to get an email this week that Tom had married for the first time at age 54, and passed away four days later due to a boating accident while on his honeymoon.

Tom was a man with a big laugh and an even bigger heart. When I started a Linux Users Group (LUG) on campus, there was Tom – helping to arrange a place to meet, Internet access when we needed it, and gave his evenings to simply be present and a supporter.

• Netizen Report: Tech Community Mourns Open-Source Activist Executed by Syrian Regime

• MIT Media Lab mourns after reported execution of Syrian activist

• Disappeared Palestinian-Syrian software developer reportedly executed

• Cyber-activist Bassel Khartabil, believed executed in Syria, remembered as 'one of the great ones'

• Bassel Pays with His Life for Non-Violent Resistance in Syria

  Yesterday Noura Safadi said that she had received confirmation that the Syrian authorities executed her husband, Bassel (Safadi) Khartabil, two years ago. Noura had been looking for Bassel since he disappeared from a Syrian prison in October 2015.

  Bassel, a Syrian-Palestinian computer engineer, used his expertise to advance freedom of speech in Syria. Foreign Policy magazine named Bassel one of its Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2012, “for insisting, against all odds, on a peaceful Syrian revolution.” Syrian security forces arrested Bassel in March 2012, and a relative said he was tortured in an unofficial detention facility run by Military Intelligence. Syria’s security services routinely subject detainees to horrific forms of torture in a web of facilities amounting to a torture archipelago.

  In December 2012, the authorities transferred Bassel to `Adra prison where Noura was finally able to visit him, and learned he would be tried in a military field court for his peaceful activism. Military field court proceedings are secret and usually last only a few minutes; defendants have no legal representation, and the decisions are not subject to appeal. Bassel appeared before a field court in December 2012 but never heard a verdict.

We are deeply saddened and completely outraged to learn today that our friend and colleague Bassel Khartabil has been executed by the Syrian regime.

Bassel was Creative Commons’ Syrian project lead, an open source software programmer, teacher, Wikipedia contributor, and free culture advocate. He was also a devoted son and husband, and a great friend to many people in the open knowledge community around the world. The projects and communities he helped to build live on across the globe, and will remain a tribute to his leadership.

In March of 2012, Bassel was taken from the street in Damascus amid a wave of military arrests. He was jailed for several years, during which time he was allowed to infrequently communicate with family members. Then, in October 2015, he was abruptly transferred to an undisclosed location. At that time, all communications between Bassel and the outside world ceased. The Creative Commons board publicly called for Bassel’s immediate release, and the MIT Media Lab offered Bassel a research position in its Center for Civic Media. His family and friends prayed for his safe return, and are heartbroken today to learn the awful and terrifying news of his execution.

Over the past several years, a variety of human rights groups called for Bassel’s release. Amnesty International launched a campaign through its Urgent Action network that encouraged the public to write letters to Syrian authorities and urge them to grant Bassel access to his family, a lawyer, and medical attention. The US State Department singled him out on International Human Rights Day in 2015 as a “prisoner of conscience.”

Tributes are flowing in this evening for Ramon Casha, chairman of the Malta Humanist Society, civil rights campaigner and a frequent commenter on Times of Malta, who has passed away.

Michael Briguglio, former chairman of Alternattiva wrote in a Facebook post: Rest in peace Ramon Casha: honest, free-thinking and non-partisan civil society campaigner within Malta Humanist Association and so many causes.