Damascus, June 23: Award-winning Syrian human rights lawyer Muhannad al-Hasni, charged with “spreading false information,” has been sentenced to three years in prison, Syrian rights groups said on Wednesday.
“The criminal court in Damascus today condemned the lawyer Muhannad al-Hasni to three years in prison after charging him with the crime of spreading false information likely to weaken the morale of the nation,” the groups said in a joint statement.
Hasni, 44, who is the president of the Syrian Organisation for Human Rights, was arrested in July 2009 after being summoned repeatedly by the security services.
Last month, leading international campaign groups awarded Hasni the 2010 Martin Ennals award for human rights defenders, describing him as “a man of an exceptional courage, arbitrarily detained in unacceptable conditions for defending the rule of law.”
The groups said at the time that he was being held in Adra prison, where he was reportedly in a poor condition and without access to proper medical care.
The Syrian rights groups also said on Wednesday that five others, Mahmoud Azizi, Yahia Hindawi, Rabii Duba, Abdelmalek Hammuda and Omar Osman were each sentenced to 12 years in prison on Sunday “for forming a secret association aimed at changing the political and social character of the state.”
A sixth person, Rabii Issa, received a 10-year sentence on the same charges.
Those convicted on Sunday were tried by the State High Security Court after forming an “Islamist organisation,” according to the rights groups.
The joint statement was signed by the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the Syrian League for the Defence of Human Rights and the National Organisation of Human Rights in Syria.
–Agencies