Far From Justice - Human Rights Watch

After signing, they took us to `Adra [prison]. I was placed in a tiny room of 2mx 0.85m, with the toilet taking a large part of it.After two-and-a-half months in `Adra, they referred us to the SSSC. We sawan investigative judge named Mansour. We did not have any lawyers. Heasked me about the initial confession, and I denied many aspects of it.My first court session was on January 11, 2004. The lawyers were appointedon the same day.On June 27, 2004, the SSSC convicted the initial seven detainees of “membership in a secretorganization” and “attempting to annex part of Syrian territory to another country.” The courtsentenced three of them to two years’ imprisonment, and four others to one year, butimmediately released them, given the time they had already spent in detention. 155On October 10, 2004, the SSSC sentenced Mas`ud Hamed, the one who had photographedthe demonstration, to three years in jail on the same charges.In response to a request for information from the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention,the Syrian authorities claimed that the court tried Hamed for being “a member of aproscribed Kurdish party called “Yakiti”; for disseminating inflammatory propaganda; andfor publishing articles, under a pseudonym, in an unauthorized magazine called DEM.” Theyalso accused him of printing “1,000 copies of a calendar showing a map of what purports tobe Kurdistan, with the intention of distributing it among Kurdish students at DamascusUniversity.” 156 Even if Hamed had carried out all the acts of which the government accusedhim, these acts are protected, under international law, by his rights to freedom of expressionand association.Sentencing of Kurdish Student for Unpublished ArticleOn November 27, 2005, the SSSC sentenced Shevan `Abdo, 24, a Kurdish university student,to two-and-a-half years for “weakening national sentiment” (Art. 285 of Penal Code),“inciting sectarian tensions” (Art. 298 of Penal Code), and writings intended “to cut-off part155 The three sentenced to two years in jail were Muhammad Mustapha, Sherif Ramadan, and Khaled al-`Ali. The foursentenced to one year were `Amr Murad, Salar Saleh, Husam Muhammad Amin, and Hussein Ramadan.156 Response of government included in Working Group on Arbitrary Detention opinion, Muhannad Qutaysh et al. v. SyrianArab Republic, Opinion 7/2005, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/2006/7/Add.1, http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/wgad/7-2005.html, p. 30(2005).45 Human Rights Watch February 2009