Daughter of detained Syrian Christian mayor appeals to Trump: 'Bring my father home'

The daughter of a detained Syrian Christian mayor credited with organizing his town’s successful defense against ISIS appealed directly to President Donald Trump on Sept. 15 to help secure her father’s release, speaking at a Capitol Hill advocacy day nearly 19 months into his imprisonment without charge.

Natalie Khalil, 21, addressed the event hosted by Christian Solidarity International (CSI) and In Defense of Christians (IDC), asking Trump to “use your influence to bring my father home.” 

“He is a father to me and my siblings, but because of his sacrifice and leadership, he is also a father and hero to our entire Christian village, Sadad,” she said.

Her father, Suleiman Khalil, 51, served as mayor of Sadad, a historic Syriac Christian town in rural Homs province from 2012 to 2016. He was not a loyalist of the former Assad government and belonged to a party historically opposed to it. 

Khalil became a local hero in 2015 when he organized Sadad’s civilian defense after the Syrian army fled an ISIS assault, a battle that likely prevented a massacre of the town’s Christian population. According to CSI, which has documented his case extensively, Khalil “never carried a weapon” himself; his role was organizational and political. Two years earlier, in 2013, Sadad had survived a separate attack by Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate, whose founder Ahmed al-Sharaa now leads the country’s transitional government.

Syrian security forces arrested Khalil at his home in February 2025, roughly two months after that government took power, presenting a warrant that listed no specific charge. 

For three months afterward, officials told his family his name wasn’t in their records, effectively disappearing him, before he was located in Homs Central Prison, where he remains without legal representation or formal proceedings. 

His daughter has said the facility is run by religious sheikhs who impose Islamic law on all detainees regardless of faith; she and her mother were required to wear Islamic head coverings during visits, and her father has been made to fast during Ramadan and given only the Quran to read, alongside inadequate food and expired medication. Natalie Khalil has said she believes the arrest is tied to malicious reports about her father’s Christian faith and possible retribution from figures now in power whom Sadad’s defenders once resisted.

CSI and IDC organizers framed Khalil’s continued detention as a test case for religious minorities’ standing under Syria’s new government. 

“Suleiman is a hero and should be treated as such,” said Joel Velkamp, CSI’s director for public advocacy, in a Sept. 15 press release. IDC executive director Richard Ghazal argued the case would help determine whether religious minorities can have confidence in their future in Syria, and said Washington should make religious freedom and equal citizenship central to its policy as it reengages with Damascus.

That reengagement has already begun. The Trump administration recently rescinded Syria’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, a status the country had held for decades. Wednesday’s advocacy day followed an earlier visit to Washington that CSI organized for Natalie Khalil in November, when she met with Rep. Pete Aguilar and officials from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.