Fariq Hweigah is a Syrian human rights lawyer and father of two who previously worked at the Palace of Justice in Damascus and volunteered to defend members of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression during their military trial, also co-founding the Syrian Citizenship Centre in 2013. On 24 June 2013, he was stopped at a checkpoint in Jdaidat Yabous, on the Lebanese-Syrian border, where authorities confiscated his passport and arrested him. He remained in custody for 24 hours and called his family around 6 pm that day to inform them of the seizure, before being released the following evening.