ERBIL — Well-known Syrian Kurdish Said Gabari died on Monday at the age of 64 in a hospital in Erbil.

Gabari had been admitted to the intensive care unit at a hospital in the Kurdistan Region capital in the recent weeks. He was battling lung cancer.

Said Gabari was born blind in 1956 in a village on the suburb of Derik district in Hasakah province of Syrian Kurdistan.

He is known for his music with which he contributed to the Kurdish revolutions and the struggle of his people for freedom.

Gabari, as he told The Christian Science Monitor in 2015, had spent years behind bars in prisons of all four parts of greater Kurdistan (Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria). He said in the interview that his crime was giving voice to the Kurdish dreams.

Gabari will be buried in Mala Omar village near Erbil on Monday during a procession which will abide by the anti-coronavirus measures put in place in Kurdistan Region.

BasNews