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Syrian Kurdish journalism student Massoud
Hamid released
26.7.2006
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Syria, -- Massoud
Hamid, a journalism student, was jailed by the
Syrian regime for spreading a photo of a peaceful
demonstration. One day before the end of his three
years in jail punishment, he was released. Protests
and campaigns for his release were in vain.
Finally the Kurdish student walks free again. But he
suffered, just as many other Kurdish political
activists, the cruelties of the Syrian jail. There
is no doubt that he has been tortured, ill-treated,
isolated and many other things. His release is too
late, but still his Kurdish brethren in
West-Kurdistan weeps in joy.
He was welcomed by his people in the Kurdish town
Derbesye. There he held a speech. The police
officers tried to stop the villagers, but they lost.
For now the Kurdish symbol of free speech in
West-Kurdistan is free again. But nobody knows for
how long.
Massoud Hamid, winner of
2005 Reporters Without Borders Internet Freedom
Prize, released at end of prison sentence |
Massoud Hamid
Photo:Amude.com |
Reporters Without Borders welcomes the release from
prison on 23 July of Massoud Hamid, winner of the
2005 Reporters Without Borders - Fondation de France
Internet Freedom Prize, at the end of a three-year
sentence for posting photos online of a pro-Kurdish
demonstration in Damascus.
It noted that he had been “frequently ill-treated
during his totally unjustified” sentence and said it
was “disgusting” that he had been jailed simply for
exercising his right to speak freely.
Hamid, a journalism student, was released a day
before his sentence officially ended and returned to
his family home in the Kurdish town of Derbesye, in
northern Syria. Scores of villagers went to the
house to welcome him despite police sent there to
prevent them.
He was held in solitary confinement during his first
year in Adra prison, in a suburb of Damascus, and
was not allowed to see a doctor, or read in his cell
or wear glasses, which badly damaged his eyesight.
He staged several fruitless hunger-strikes in
protest, suffers from back pain and is due to have
tests in hospital.
He had been arrested on 24 July 2003 as he was
taking an exam at Damascus University. After a
mockery of a trial, the state security court
sentenced him on 10 October 2004 to three years in
prison for “belonging to a secret organisation” and
“trying to annex part of Syria to another country.”
A month before he was arrested, he had sent photos
of a peaceful demonstration on 25 June that year in
front of UNICEF offices in Damascus to a
German-based Kurdish-language website (www.amude.com).
rsf org | amude.com | Vladimir van Wilgenburg
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