FreeAminaArraf/Facebook 
 
 : After this post about the author of the blog A Gay Girl in Damascus was published, Andy Carvin, an NPR journalist and expert at debunking Internet rumors, pointed out that none of the reports of the arrest of Amina Abdallah Arraf appeared to have been written by journalists who had previously met or interviewed her. A few hours after Mr. Carvin asked his network of followers on Twitter, “has anyone met Amina (Gay Girl In Damascus) in person?” he observed: “It’s just odd that I can’t find anyone who has actually met her in person.” 
 
 Although it remains possible that the blog’s author was indeed detained, and has been writing a factual, not fictional, account of recent events in Syria, readers should be aware that the one person who has identified herself — to The Times, the BBC and Al Jazeera — as a personal friend of the blogger, Sandra Bagaria, has now clarified that she has never actually met the author of the Gay Girl in Damascus blog. Ms. Bagaria told The Lede that she had also never conversed with Ms. Arraf face to face via Skype, but had conducted an online relationship with her since January entirely through Internet communications in writing, including more than 500 e-mails. 
 
 Last month, CNN interviewed Ms. Arraf, but also via e-mail. 
 
 The Lede has also discovered that some of the text posted on the Gay Girl in Damascus blog was previously posted online in 2007, in a blog attributed to the same author that was described by her as a mix of fact and fiction. 
 
 The text of the post below was revised to underscore that the Gay Girl in Damascus blog is currently the only source of the report that its author has been arrested. Efforts to contact Ms. Arraf’s family have been unsuccessful so far. 
 
 : 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. Ms. Ismail wrote that Ms. Arraf, accompanied by a friend, was on her way to meet a member of a Syrian opposition group in Damascus at about 6 p.m. local time when she was “seized by three men in their early 20s. According to the witness (who does not want her identity known), the men were armed. Amina hit one of them and told the friend to go find her father.” 
 
 Ms. Ismail continued: “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 witness did not get the tag number. 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. 
 
 According to her blog, Ms. Arraf, 35, was born in Virginia to a Syrian father and an American mother and holds dual citizenship. She began writing her blog in February and has been openly critical of the Syrian government’s response to the protest movement and her desire to see President Bashar al-Assad’s fall. 
 
 On Sunday, she wrote: “Today or tomorrow might be the last one for me; or, tomorrow might be the first day of the new Syria. Ben Ali is gone, Mubarak is gone, Saleh, they say, is gone as well. Assad has not much longer and I plan to see him go.” 
 
 In the same post, Ms. Arraf described her part in the protest movement and argued strongly that opponents of the government should not turn to violence: 
 
 We went up north and helped spread sparks, in the cities of the plain and by the banks of the Orontes; we listened and we carried messages. Some were sent beyond this land, others were carried here in turn. 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? Take up the guns which are buried, uses bombs and make revolutionary justice. I for one pushed back against that; we want a new Syria, a break from all that’s come before. If we take power by killing and torturing, if we make summary justice and examples of Them, how are we different? 
 
 It is not clear if Ms. Arraf meant that she has helped to smuggle video as well as messages out of the country, but the risks faced by Syrian activists armed only with phones and Internet connections were made very plain in a chilling clip posted online just after her arrest. According to the Anonymous Syria Twitter feed, this video was recorded by an activist who was “shot dead while filming tanks shelling Talbiseh,” outside the city of Homs in central Syria: 
 
 Late Monday night, a brief update signed by Ms. Arraf’s cousin on her blog reported that a search for the missing blogger was ongoing: 
 
 I have been on the telephone with both her parents and all that we can say right now is that she is missing. Her father is desperately trying to find out where she is and who has taken her. Unfortunately, there are at least 18 different police formations in Syria as well as multiple different party militias and gangs. We do not know who took her so we do not know who to ask to get her back. It is possible that they are forcibly deporting her. 
 
 A State Department spokesman told The Lede on Tuesday: “Officials in Damascus and Washington are working to ascertain more information about Ms. Arraf, including confirmation of her citizenship.” If the first chapter of a book posted on the Gay Girl in Damascus blog in February — described by the author as both an autobiography and a novel — is factual, her American roots are very deep indeed. 
 
 In this text, Ms. Arraf wrote that she was born in Staunton, Virginia, in October 1975 to Abdallah Ismail Arraf and Caroline McClure Arraf. The McClures, she explained, emigrated to Virginia from Ulster in 1742. 
 
 However, it is not entirely clear which parts of this autobiographical novel are fact and which are fiction. Much of the same text was posted almost four years ago on another blog, Amina Arraf’s Attempts At Art (and Alliteration), that first appeared online in September 2007. That blog began with a post that explained: 
 
 This blog is… where I will be posting samples of fiction and literature I am working on. This blog will contain chapters and drafts. This blog will have what may sometimes seem likely deeply personal accounts. And sometimes they will be. But there will also be fiction. And I will not tell you which is which. 
 
 Ms. Arraf’s new blog has garnered her a lot of attention from bloggers and journalists in recent months. 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. A short time later, a Free Amina Arraf Facebook page was set up to call for the blogger’s release. 
 
 
 
 Working on my social media skills to help #FreeAmina and spread the word out…Keep the momentum. #Syria Sade B. 
 
 sade_la_bag 
 
 In a telephone interview with The Times on Tuesday, Ms. Bagaria, who is in Montreal, said: “I have no news. I am working as hard as I can, we all are, to gather as much information as I can gather. I talked to Rania yesterday at the end of the day, but she had no news. None of us have any news. What we are doing now is alerting as many people as possible in Syria to get as much information as we can. The blog is very popular and since yesterday word has spread on Twitter, and now people are spreading the news very quickly.” 
 
 Ms. Bagaria added that Ms. Arraf had been hiding in “four or five different apartments in four or five different cities” across Syria since two young men appeared at her home in Damascus several weeks ago. 
 
 “Amina woke up in the middle of the night and saw her father outside talking to two young guys in their early 20s. I think they were there just following orders, they didn’t know what they were doing,” Ms. Bagaria said. Although the two men eventually left without arresting the blogger that night, Ms. Bagaria said, “since that day, we agreed they might come back for her. It was only a matter of time.” 
 
 One month ago, Ms. Arraf wrote that she had gone into hiding after her father reported that men had come looking for her while she was out blogging at an Internet cafe. In a post headlined “Gone Underground,” she explained that her father said: “They came back for you. This time, there’s nothing I can do. Go somewhere and don’t tell me where you are. Be safe. I love you.” 
 
 Two weeks later, Ms. Arraf told readers of her blog that she had been sent a fake message by someone posing as her partner, inviting her to a meeting at a hotel in Damascus. 
 
 In recent weeks, Ms. Arraf had traveled around Syria, sometimes in disguise and once riding inside a box in the back of a truck, Ms. Bagaria said. She added that at one point, the blogger donned an Islamic head scarf and posed as her father’s wife so that they could slip more easily through government checkpoints. “When she was traveling with her father, she was grabbed by a soldier who said, ‘What is a lovely young girl like you doing with an old man like him?'” Ms. Bagaria said. “There were crazy, intense moments when her heart must have been beating so much.” 
 
 
 
 Syrian government blames Salafi armed gangs for the killings in Syria, then goes and arrests a harmless female blogger. #FreeAmina #Syria Anas Qtiesh 
 
 anasqtiesh 
 
 Ms. Arraf started blogging a month before the first mass protests in Syria, but she wrote in the introduction to the blog that she was inspired by the fact that “The winds of change are blowing hard through the Middle East.” She concluded her first post by writing: 
 
 A revolution is underway and all of us want to see it revolutionize every aspect of our societies, rethinking not just how the states are governed but also the role of women in these societies, the rights of sexual autonomy, and, yes, the right to marry who we love. 
 
 Two days later, in a post headlined, “Why I Am Doing This,” Ms. Arraf explained that her family’s political connections gave her a measure of freedom: 
 
 I live in Damascus, Syria. It’s a repressive police state. Most LGBT people are still deep in the closet or staying as invisible as possible. But I have set up a blog announcing my sexuality, with my name and my photo. Am I crazy? Maybe. But I’m also aware of the winds of freedom and change blowing from one end of the Arab world to the other. And I want that freedom wind to bring with it our liberation, not just as Arabs and as Syrians, but also as women and as lesbians. Maybe it will happen. Maybe it won’t. But if I want it to happen, I have to begin by doing something bold and visible. I can, because I’m a dual national and have benefits of politically connected relatives, be more visible than many women here. 
 
 According to her friend, Ms. Arraf was concerned about leaving the country, even though the two women were planning a vacation in Rome this month. “She did not want to risk being trapped outside Syria,” Ms. Bagaria said. “She wanted to be part of what is going on there. She wanted to keep protesting every day, meeting with people and organizing community meetings. She had a lot of contacts to make sure the protests would keep going and the opposition would keep growing and growing, to make people aware of what the regime was doing.” ||||| Online campaigns to free a Syrian-American lesbian blogger gained momentum Tuesday as thousands of people worldwide demanded her release. 
 
 The disappearance of Amina Arraf, a 36-year-old writer known for her frank posts about her sexuality and open criticism of Syrian President Bashar Assad's autocratic rule, prompted an outpouring of support from social network users. 
 
 Arraf wrote a blog called "A Gay Girl in Damascus," a mixture of erotic prose and updates about Syria's violent uprising, including her participation in anti-regime protests. She was detained after weeks on the run in the Syrian capital, family members said Tuesday. 
 
 As soon as Arraf's partner, Sandra Bagaria of Montreal, learned of her disappearance, she quickly turned to Twitter and Facebook for help, The New York Times reported. 
 
 By 6 p.m. ET Tuesday, The Free Amina page on Facebook had gained 8,066 followers, up from 150 followers Monday evening. Online support poured in from South America, North America, Europe, Africa and Australia. 
 
 "God Bless you, wherever you are may your courage be an example to others. Support and solidarity against repression in any form from Darjeeling, India," posted Kundan Rai on Tuesday. Minutes later, Rim Toum shared this Facebook post: "Support from Tunisia! We think about the Syrian people and wish them to gain their freedom soon." 
 
 On Petitionbuzz.com, at least 1,418 people signed an online petition calling for Arraf's release on Tuesday. "Let her go!" wrote Anabelle Vo on the site. 
 
 Attempts by msnbc.com to contact Bagaria or family members were unsuccessful Tuesday evening. 
 
 'I am complex' 
 
 Arraf’s cousin, Rania Ismail, said the blogger was last seen Monday being bundled into a car by three men in civilian clothes. The car, Ismail wrote in a post on her cousin's blog, had a sticker depicting Assad's late brother Basel, according to a friend who was nearby and saw what happened. Basel Assad died before he could inherit the office. 
 
 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. 
 
 An activist with the Local Coordination Committees also said Arraf was taken but gave no details. 
 
 "We are hoping she is simply in jail and nothing worse has happened to her," Ismail wrote. 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. 
 
 The day before she was detained, Arraf wrote: "I am complex, I am many things; I am an Arab, I am Syrian, I am a woman, I am queer, I am Muslim, I am binational, I am tall, I am too thin; my sect is Sunni, my clan is Omari, my tribe is Quraysh, my city is Damascus," she wrote in www.damascusgaygirl.blogspot.com a day before being detained. 
 
 "I am also a Virginian. I was born on an afternoon in a hospital in sight of where Woodrow Wilson entered the world, where streets are named for country stars." 
 
 Secret police 
 
 Since the uprising against Assad began in mid-March, a government crackdown has left about 1,300 people dead and more than 10,000 detained, according to human rights groups. Several activists who were briefly detained during the revolt said they were tortured, humiliated and forced to sign pledges to avoid anti-regime activities. 
 
 In one post, Arraf wrote about taking part in a Damascus protest that was broken up by security forces. 
 
 "Busloads of secret police armed with batons — thousands of them — met us around Abbasiyeen Square and began to assault the edges of the crowd," she wrote. "Teargas was lobbed at us. I saw people vomiting from the gas as I covered my own mouth and nose and my eyes burned. ... We broke and were scattered." 
 
 But she gained prominence after writing on April 26 about two plainclothes security agents who came to her home to detain her and were argued into leaving by her father. Soon afterward, Arraf and her father went into hiding, changing location frequently in Damascus, the Syrian capital. 
 
 Homosexuality is illegal in Syria and gays are frowned upon by the country's conservative society. It is rare for gay Arabs to speak openly about their sexuality, and even rarer for parents to defend them. 
 
 "I went into a hair salon one day and, not long after I arrived, I picked up on something between the women working there; I spoke around in circles and so did they and finally learned that the women there were all gay. We relaxed, we talked. 
 
 "I realized I'd found an underground outpost of our kind. I found a cafe where women held hands," she wrote. 
 
 Arraf insisted that she wouldn't flee Syria, saying that activists had to fight for a more liberal and democratic country. 
 
 In her blog, Arraf wrote that the regime no longer had the power to frighten Syrians. 
 
 "For an oppressive system to work, it doesn't need an enormous network of spies, of prisons, of torturers and so on ... it needs just one thing: for the great majority of the people to actually — believe — that the state is mighty and vicious and to be afraid of it." 
 
 "And all we ever had to do was to stop being afraid. And the moment that we stopped being afraid, the earth shook. The regime cannot long survive if the people no longer are scared," she wrote. 
 
 "They may be deadly but we are not afraid any longer. We are becoming free." 
 
 The Associated Press contributed to this report.
– 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.