Cyber-dissident held four months without trial

Reporters Without Borders has repeated its call for the release of cyber-dissident Ali Sayed al-Shihabi, who has been held for more than four months without trial in Adra prison near Damascus. Security services arrested the 50-year-old English-professor on 10 August 2006 after he posted articles on far-left websites. He is being held in an unsanitary cell with 33 common-law prisoners and was reportedly tortured during questioning. He is suffering from respiratory problems. “The Syrian justice system does not respect the most basic rights of prisoners of opinion”, the worldwide press freedom organisation said. “Syria is a country without rule of law where one can be imprisoned for months, even a whole year, without being tried.” “Since the ruling Baath party controls most of the media, the Internet is one of the few spaces where journalists and independent intellectuals can express their ideas. But the crackdown against these Internet-users is becoming increasingly vicious. The country is now the Middle East's largest prison for cyber-dissidents”, it added. Al-Shihabi, who is the father of three children, is visited by his family every week and he has a team of lawyers defending him. In the months leading up to his arrest, al-Shihabi, was questioned several times by the security services about his online articles, particularly about those posted on the extreme-left site www.rezgar.com. In these articles, he announced that he wanted to found a new political party; “Syria for all”. He published a book in 2005 called “Whither Syria?” made up of a collection of his online articles, which was widely distributed in Lebanon. Al-Shihabi has previously been imprisoned for one year, in 1975, then for nine years between 1982 and 1991 for his membership of the banned Syrian Party for Communist Action (PCA). Two other cyber-dissidents, Habib Saleh and Muhened Abdulrahman, have been imprisoned respectively since 29 May 2005 and 7 September 2006. Journalist and writer, Michel Kilo, has been held for seven months. ------------- Create your blog with Reporters without borders: www.rsfblog.org