DAMASCUS: Syrian authorities have charged a leading human rights lawyer of making statements that “weaken national morale” after he led calls for the release of political prisoners, rights defenders said on Friday. Mohannad al-Hussani, who has been overseeing defense of Syria’s most prominent opposition figures, was arrested on Tuesday by State Security, a intelligence agency in Syria.
An investigative judge later questioned Hussani, 43, about statements he made in public and in court in defense of his clients, the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights said.
A statement by the group called on the government to release Hussani and “stop arbitrary arrests against the political opposition and civil society activists. Any Syrian citizen can be arrested arbitrary without evidence. This has become normal in Syria,” said Haitham Maleh, a lawyer who campaigned against state coercion and was jailed in the 1980s.
The government, which has been controlled by the Baath Party since it took power in a 1963 coup and banned any opposition, usually lodges the “weakening national morale” charge against its opponents.
A dozen of dissidents were sentenced last year to 2 1/2 years each in prison on the charge after they participated in a meeting to revive a democracy movement. They include former parliamentarian Riad Seif, who is suffering from cancer.
Hussani took up the cause of the 12, particularly Seif, whom he feared could die in prison.
Anwar al-Bunni, another lawyer with stubborn views on the need to protect individual rights in Syria, was sentenced in 2007 for five years in jail on the same charge as Hussani.
Hussani has long argued that the “medieval” charge was invented by Syria first military ruler, Hosni al-Zaim, in 1949 and “had no place in a 21st century state.”
The soft spoken lawyer is known for his non-confrontational style and many thought he would be spared the fate of scores of leading intellectuals, dissidents and independent figures who called for democracy and ended locked up.
“The authorities want to make an example of Mohannad and say that even the tiniest whisper, the slightest call for rights, will not go unpunished,” one activist said.
A diplomat in Damascus said Hussani’s arrest showed that “no progress whatsoever” had been made to encourage Syrian authorities to improve their observance of human rights.
Western countries, including the United States, have muted their criticism of Syria’s human rights record after engaging in a rapprochement with Damascus that considerably eased Syria’s diplomatic and economic isolation since last year.
One exception has been the Netherlands, which diplomats say opposes the signing of an economic agreement between the EU and Syria because of Syria’s human rights record.