From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Syria tries 600 political prisoners
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 22:41:50 GMT

/** headlines: 445.0 **/
** Topic: SYRIA: Human rights body says 600 p **
** Written  9:50 am  Nov  2, 1992 by newsdesk in cdp:headlines **
/* Written 12:12 am  Nov  2, 1992 by newsdesk in cdp:ips.englibrary */
/* ---------- "SYRIA: Human rights body says 600 p" ---------- */
Copyright Inter Press Service 1992, all rights reserved.  Permission to re-
print within 7 days of original date only with permission from 'newsdesk'.

Title: SYRIA: Human rights body says 600 prisoners unfairly tried

/embargo/

att editors: please note the following copy is under embargo and
may not be printed or otherwise reproduced before monday nov. 1

washington, nov 1 (ips) -- the syrian government has quietly begun
state security court trials against an estimated 600 political
detainees, many of whom have been held for years without charges,
a u.s. human rights group charged here monday.

the proceedings, which the new york-based middle east watch
said were unmatched in scale since 1971, began in damascus aug.
27. at least 150 suspected members of banned communist factions,
some of whom have already been held without charges for more than
12 years, are among those facing trial, the group said.

in a 61-page report entitled 'throwing away the key:
indefinite political detention in syria', middle east watch
charged that the presiding judge in the case had admitted into
evidence confessions extracted under torture.

the group said it has sent a formal appeal to syria's
president, hafez al-assad, to stop the proceedings pending an
inquiry into the defendants' claims of torture.

it also appealed for the immediate release of thousands of
individuals who remain in detention without charges, some for as
long as 22 years.

the report said many of the defendants are being charged with
offences arising solely from the peaceful exercise of their right
to free association, expression and political belief.

they are now being charged with violating a vaguely worded
national security law -- which proscribes membership in illegal
parties, distributing party literature or mere agreement with the
political line of the party in question.

besides the 600 now on trial, about 3,800 other political
prisoners remain locked up without trial, according to the report
which charged that conditions in syrian prisons have not improved
since the group last looked into the subject in 1989.

the report, based on first-hand accounts by recently released
detainees and families of those recently arrested, offers a grim
picture of the isolation in which many of the prisoners have been
kept.

many live in cramped, windowless and airless underground cells
in the so-called ''interrogation branches'' or in open-roofed
communal cell blocks in the remote desert region of palmyra.
(more/ips)

syria: human rights body says 600 prisoners unfairly tried(2-e)

syria: human rights (2)

releases of some 3,500 detainees late last year have relieved
severe overcrowding in some prisons, the report says.

the largest number, about 2,000, are being held for suspected
affiliation with an illegal muslim brotherhood group involved in
violent anti-government actions in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

syria's prisons contain a ''veritable 'who's who' of the
nation's intellectual elite, according to the report, which
identifies some 245 engineers, doctors, lawyers and writers in
detention without formal charges on what are believed to be
politically motivated grounds.

the report said damascus continues to use a state of emergency
ordinance, signed into law 30 years ago, as a vehicle to stifle
dissent. it authorises sweeping powers of censorship, preventive
arrest, and indefinite detention for vaguely defined reasons of
''state security''.

the all-pervasive security apparatus continues to engage in
torture and abuse of political prisoners with impunity, according
to the report, which described detention as an ''open-ended
nightmare''. (end/ips/jl/yjc/92)

** End of text from cdp:headlines **
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