Media barred from trials of regime opponents

Reporters Without Borders protested to Syria today about the exclusion of journalists from recent trials of regime opponents and said it showed that the authorities there had "no wish to answer to international public opinion" for their rule. "This attitude is clearly a sign of the hardening of the regime and the jailing of these opponents shows a complete contempt for freedom of expression," said Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard in a letter to interior minister Ali Hamud. "We urge you to reverse this decision and allow the media and international observers to attend the next hearings of these cases." Journalists were barred from the second hearing on 19 May in the state security court trial of regime opponent Riad Al-Turk (see photo), except for a reporter from the government-controlled news agency SANA. They had been allowed to attend the first hearing on 28 April. Turk, a 71-year-old communist ex--lawyer, was arrested last 1 September after having called for a "transition from dictatorship to democracy" during a meeting at a private home in Damascus last 6 August. In mid-August, he appeared on the Qatari TV station Al-Jazeera and criticised President Bashar el-Assad. He had already spent 17 years in prison without trial before being released in 1998. When the trial of Habib Issa and Walid Buni opened before the state security court on 14 May, journalists and diplomats were not allowed in except, again, for a SANA reporter. The defence lawyers refused to allow the judge to start cross-examining and demanded that the trial be open to the public. The next hearing for Buni, a doctor and member of a civil society organisation, has been set for 12 June and for Issa, a lawyer, former journalist and spokesman of the Jamil el-Atassi meeting club, for 19 June. "The things they are accused of saying are simply free expression – just words, statements, press articles and remarks in political company," lawyer Abdel Azim told the Agence France-Presse. Journalists were also not allowed into the state security court trial on 9 May of economist Aref Dalila and businessman Habib Saleh. The same went for diplomats and the families of the accused. The next hearing will be on 3 June. Turk, Issa, Buni, Dalila and Saleh are among a group of opposition activists arrested last summer and charged with "trying to change the Constitution by illegal means, incitement to religious dissent and sedition, spreading false information and trying to harm the image of the state." Two members of parliament in the group, Riad al-Seif and Mamoun Homsi, were jailed for five years each by the criminal court in Damascus on 4 April for having allegedly tried to change the Constitution "by unlawful means." Last August and September, several foreign journalists based in Damascus were repeatedly intimidated by the authorities just as these major civil society figures were being arrested. Some were warned not to write anything about the arrests.