Five years imprisonment for political and human rights activist

21/08/2002
Press release

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) strongly denounces the condemnation on 19 August 2002, of Mr. Habib Issa, a lawyer and founding member of the Human Rights Association of Syria and official spokesperson of the Gamal Al-Atasi Forum for Democratic Dialogue, to 5 years imprisonment with deprivation of his civil and political rights by the Syrian Supreme State Security Court, an emergency Court whose decisions cannot be appealed.

He was charged with “attempting to change the Constitution by illegal means, incitation to sedition, confessional dissension and spreading false information, which could undermine the State’s image.”

Habib Issa was arrested on 12 September 2001; he has been imprisoned since then and has not been allowed any visits. The FIDH considers his detention as arbitrary: According to all information received, he was denied a fair trial and that this sentence only sanctions his legitimate exercise of freedom of expression.

The FIDH is deeply worried about the wave of repression that human rights defenders and political activists in Syria have been facing in the last months and recalls that several sentences have been pronounced against human rights activists in a move that seems to be directed at hindering the human rights movement. A member of the Committees for the Defence of Human Rights in Syria (CDF), Dr. Kamal Al Labwani, is also awaiting a Supreme State Security Court decision to be taken on 28th August on the basis of the same accusations.

The FIDH urges the Syrian authorities to take all necessary measures to conform to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and in particular to article 15 which guarantees the right to freedom of expression.

The FIDH appeals for the immediate release of Habib Issa and of all prisoners of conscience in Syria.

The FIDH calls on the Syrian authorities to lift the State of Emergency, allowing for restrictions on freedom of expression.

Background information

Mr. Habib Issa was arrested on 12 September. Habib Issa and 9 other Syrian political activists (Aref Alilah,Wadih Al Bunni Riad Turk, Kamal Al-Labwani, Walid Albouni, Habib Saleh, Hassan Saadoun, Fawaz Tello) were arbitrarily arrested in August and September 2001. At least 8 of them were arrested without charges under the decree 06 of 1963 establishing a State of emergency and martial law in Syria. They have been or will be deferred before the Supreme State Security Court. Riad Turk, was sentenced on June 26 to two and a half years imprisonment on the charges of “attempting to change the Constitution by illegal means. Mamoun Homsi and Riad Seif, two MPs, were tried under the penal code of 1994 and sentenced to 5 years in prison by the Penal Court of Damascus on the same charges. On 31 July 2002, the Supreme State Security Court sentenced Aref Alilah and Wadih Al Bunnni to 10 and 5 years imprisonment, decision that was denounced by the FIDH in a press release on 1 August. All of these prisoners are detained under extremely precarious conditions putting their physical and moral integrity in danger (isolation, bad treatment, restrictions of visit from family members and lawyers).

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