who became a human rights attorney and activist , inspired by her father 's work . `` It 's really hard to find your dad kidnapped because of his doing good . '' Until a few months ago , father and daughter were living in Syria . But their activism had made them both targets , and they 're now temporarily living in the United States . They watch the horror of their country on the nightly news . On Thursday , the United Nations announced that the number of people killed since protests began this year against the regime of Bashar al-Assad had surpassed 4,000 . More than 300 children have lost their lives , and the U.N. reports that children have been specifically targeted , and some tortured to death . According to a September U.N. report , the human suffering behind those numbers looks like this : Security forces opening fire on a funeral procession in Dar ` aa , a city near the border with Jordan ; security force snipers on rooftops picking off demonstrators in Damascus ; the bodies of those missing , including children , being returned to their families with their bodies torn
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- When Catherine al-Talli was 13 years old , a group of strangers came knocking at her family 's home in Syria . It was 1992 . Her mother let them in , and feverishly they explained that earlier that day they saw Syrian security forces surround al-Talli 's father , a democracy activist , at a bus station . `` They told us that 10 of them , the forces , had their guns out and they were all around my father . They kidnapped him and pushed him into a car , '' she recalled . Though they were just children , she and her siblings knew exactly what had happened . They knew their father risked his life as an activist who opposed the Syrian regime . He was paying for that , and now too would their family . It 's hard for al-Talli to talk about her father . Shortly after the regime changed hands in 2000 from father to son , he was released from prison . But al-Talli 's father had been tortured , forever scarred and changed . `` This is difficult to talk about , '' said al-Talli