(Zaman Al Wasl)- Three arrest warrants were issued by the Syrian intelligence for Dr. Orouba Barakat, the senior opposition activist who has been found dead with the U.S.-born daughter at their apartment in Istanbul on Thursday. The prominent activists, and her only child, journalist Hala Barakat, were found dead in the early hours of Thursday morning with stab wounds to the neck in the Uskudar district on the Asian side of Istanbul . According to the leaked Intelligence archive each of the General Intelligence, the Military Intelligence and The Criminal security have issued warrants to arrest Barakat, who has been an opponent of the ruling Baath party since the 80s. Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Turkey has become home to almost three million Syrian refugees, many of them opponents of the regime of 
Orouba Barakat's sister Shaza also confirmed the deaths in a Facebook post, saying the two "were assassinated at the hands of injustice and tyranny".
"Orouba wrote headlines on the first page and she pursued criminals and exposed them. Her name and her daughter's name, Hala, now made first page headlines.”
She said her sister had opposed the Assad regime from the 80s going back to the rule of Bashar al-Assad's father Hafez.
The Yeni Safak daily said Orouba, 60, had carried out investigations into alleged torture in prisons run by the Assad regime.
Syrian activist Rami Jarrah wrote on Facebook that the family believes the killing could be due to Orouba's opposition activities.
It said she had initially lived in Britain, then the United Arab Emirates before coming to Istanbul.
Halla Barakat, 22, was working for a website called Orient News and had also for a time for Turkish state broadcaster TRT. She was an American-Syrian national.
Razan Saffour, a journalist and a friend of Hala, said the family had been threatened by Syrian regime supporters before and that the Syrian journalist community in Istanbul were "shocked" at the killings.
"In Istanbul there are a lot more opposition members and senior journalists who have more influence. We’re just shocked that they were killed."
“That it happened in a compound is more shocking. They took precautions to live in a compound.”
Another friend who has asked to remain anonymous said that “they never had fear”.
Syrian opposition activists and journalists have repeatedly complained of threats to their security.
In October 2015, Syrian journalists Ibrahim Abdul Qader and Fares Hamidi from the city of Raqqa were beheaded in the Turkish town of Urfa. They had worked with the group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently to document human rights abuses committed by Islamic State in the city. (With Anadolu Agency, Middle East Eye)
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