A Syrian man has received 12 years in prison after a state security court convicted him of belonging to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, a human rights group said Monday. The court first sentenced Fuad al-Shaghri to death on Sunday but later commuted his sentence to 12 years in prison, said Ammar Qurabi, the head of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria.
Also Sunday, the court sentenced Fares Naqour, 21, to 12 years in prison for crossing the Syrian border into the village of Majdel Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Qurabi said.
Naqour was arrested by Israeli authorities and handed over to the U.N. Disengagement Observer Forces (UNDOF) which later turned him over to Syrian border guards.
The court also sentenced Mohammad Ali al-Sheik and Ammar Abdullah to three years in prison each for inciting sectarian rifts, Qurabi said.
There was no comment on any of the sentences from the Syrian government, which rarely comments on the sentences, detention and prosecution of suspects wanted in political or security-related cases.
Qurabi called for the abrogation of both the 1963 emergency law and the State Security Court whose verdicts cannot be appealed. The court was set up in line with the emergency law and its cases often are heard by military personnel rather than civilian judges.
Since coming to power in 2000, Syrian President Bashar Assad has freed hundreds of political prisoners and passed laws aimed at liberalizing the state-controlled economy. But he has also clamped down on political activists, jailing pro-democracy advocates and cracking down on government critics, showing there are limits to the dissent his administration is willing to tolerate.
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From: Associated Press Worldstream _ May 21, 2007 Monday 3:30 PM GMT
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