Attempts by msnbc.com to contact Bagaria or family members were unsuccessful Tuesday evening. : According to a note posted on the blog A Gay Girl in Damascus, the blog’s author, Amina Abdallah Arraf, who has described herself as a Syrian-American taking part in the uprising in Syria, was detained on the streets of the Syrian capital on Monday evening. The note, written by someone who identified herself as Ms. Arraf’s cousin, Rania O. Ismail, passed on an account of the blogger’s arrest provided by an unnamed eyewitness. Ismail said Arraf was detained as she and the friend were on their way "to meet a person involved" with the Local Coordination Committee, an activist group that helps organize and document protests calling for an end to the Assad regime. She promptly went and found Amina’s father.” Basel al-Assad was an older brother of Syria’s current president who died before he could inherit the office. And we heard people talking of frustration; we’ve been pushing so long, they said, and they kill us and we just die.… Why not take matters in our own hands and let them know? As soon as word of her detention was posted online on Monday, a Canadian woman who identified herself as an online friend of the blogger, Sandra Bagaria, immediately turned to social networks to try to draw attention to the case, alerting journalists and bloggers via Twitter.  Online campaigns to free a Syrian-American lesbian blogger gained momentum Tuesday as thousands of people worldwide demanded her release. I talked to Rania yesterday at the end of the day, but she had no news. "Teargas was lobbed at us. She added that Arraf had previously sent her texts to post should something happen to her, but she was holding off in hopes of hearing further word from her cousin.
– Outspoken Syrian-American blogger Amina Arraf was grabbed on the street yesterday, someone claiming to be her cousin wrote on her blog. Araff wrote a blog entitled A Gay Girl in Damascus, which had spoken out in favor of the protest movement, according to MSNBC. A post yesterday from a woman calling herself Rania Ismail said that a friend had watched three men in their 20s grab Araff. “Amina hit one of them and told the friend to go find her father. One of the men then put his hand over Amina’s mouth and they hustled her into a red Dacia Logan with a window sticker of Basel Assad,” the post reads, referring to the the late brother of President Bashar Assad. So far the blog says there’s no word on precisely who took her or where she is. The 36-year-old Arraf is a Virginia native who holds dual citizenship, reports the New York Times.