Farid Ghadry was born in Aleppo, Syria and is the elected leader of the Reform Party of Syria. Farid has dedicated his entire life to reforms in the Arab world. Farid's intimate knowledge of the people and politics of the region have been gained through firsthand experience. At the age of 17, Farid was arrested by the Syrian intelligence outside Damascus for civil disobedience. To this day, Farid is still pursued by Syrian intelligence, from this 1971 incident. At the age of 24, Farid was beaten with a cane by the Saudi religious police because he refused to pray in a mosque in Riyadh. Farid has testifies before the US Congress on extremism and freedom, and spoken at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, (SAIS), among others, and before the European Parliament, and was the first Syrian to ever be invited to speak before the Israeli Knesset.
