Sentencing of human rights lawyer Anwar Al-Bunni to five years in prison

On 24 April 2007, the Damascus Criminal Court sentenced Mr. Anwar Al-Bunni to five years in prison for “spreading false information harmful to the State” (Article 286 of the Criminal Code, which provides a sentence of three-year imprisonment). Mr. Al-Bunni was arrested on 17 May 2006, along with several other Syrian and Lebanese intellectuals and human rights defenders, after initiating the so-called Beirut-Damascus Declaration, a petition calling for the normalization of Syrian-Lebanese relations and bearing about 500 signatures.

Among those arrested were Mr. Michel Kilo, head of the Organisation for the Defence of Freedom of Expression and of the Press, arrested on 14 May 2006; Mr. Nidal Darwish, a member of the Presidential Committee and of the Committees for the Defence of Freedoms and Human Rights in Syria (CDF) executive board, arrested on 16 May 2006; Messrs. Mahmoud Mar’i and Safwan Tayfour, human rights defenders, and Mr. Ghaleb Amer, a board member of the Arab Organisation for Human Rights (AOHR), arrested on 16 May 2006. All were allegedly beaten while in detention in the Adra prison, near Damascus, which is normally reserved for convicted criminals.

While Messrs. Darwish, Mar’i, Tayfour and Amer were released on bail pending trial on 17 July 2006, Mr. Al-Bunni has been detained since his arrest at Adra prison.

OMCT calls upon the Syrian authorities to guarantee under all circumstances the physical and psychological integrity of Mr. Anwar Al-Bunni, as well as of all human rights defenders and political prisoners in Syria, as well as to ensure that he be granted a fair and impartial trial if he decided to appeal his sentencing, so that the charges against him be dropped as they seem to merely sanction his human rights activities and as such are arbitrary.

OMCT further urges the Syrian authorities to release Mr. Anwar Al-Bunni as well as all political prisoners and human rights defenders, immediately and unconditionally, as their detention are arbitrary, including Mr. Michel Kilo, Mr. Nizar Rastanawi, a founding member of the AOHR Syrian branch, who was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment by the Supreme State Security Court (SSSC) for “disseminating false information” and “insulting the President of the Republic” on 19 November 2006, and Mr. Aref Dalilah, an economics professor and human rights defender who was arrested in 2001 and sentenced to ten years in prison and deprived of his civil and political rights by the Supreme State Security Court in August 2002 for “attempting to change the Constitution by illegal means”.

Finally, OMCT calls upon the Syrian authorities to end all forms of harassment and ill-treatment of human rights defenders, to conform with the provisions of the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 9 December 1998, especially its article 12.2, which provides that “the State shall take all necessary measures to ensure the protection by the competent authorities of everyone, individually and in association with others, against any violence, threats, retaliation, de facto or de jure adverse discrimination, pressure or any other arbitrary action as a consequence of his or her legitimate exercise of the rights referred to in the present Declaration”, and to ensure in all circumstances respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms in accordance with international human rights standards and international instruments ratified by Syria.

Contact: Alexandra Kossin: 0041 22 809 49 39