Anger as Court Blocks Early Release for Activists

Human rights organisations and some local websites criticised a December 15 appeal court ruling which said imprisoned activists Michel Kilo and Mahmoud Issa should not be granted early release.



The decision, taken at a full session of the Damascus appeals court, overturned an earlier ruling by a judge in the same court that the two men could be released early because they had served enough of their sentences to qualify.



In May 2007, a criminal court in Damascus sentenced Kilo, a prominent journalist, and Issa, a translator, to three years in prison for “weakening national sentiment” and “inciting sectarian strife”. They had been arrested in May and October 2006, respectively, after signing the Beirut-Damascus Declaration, a petition calling for improved relations between Lebanon and Syria.



In a statement published online on December 15, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights condemned the decision as illegal.



All4Syria, a website which generally backs the government while advocating for reform, wrote that the court had “closed its ears despite all appeals”, and said “the decision has disappointed Syrian citizens”.



Meanwhile, Judge Majed al-Ayub lashed out at criticism of the Syrian judiciary in an opinion article for the pro-government newspaper Al-Watan. Calling for criminal charges to be brought against journalists who publish defamatory articles, the judge also criticised a survey published in the state-run newspaper al-Thawra last February in which 99 per cent of respondents said they thought the judiciary was the most corrupt of all official institutions.