DAMASCUS, 9 July 2006 — Thirteen former members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood have been released after having served more than 20 years behind bars, a human rights activist said yesterday. Mohannad Al-Hassani, a lawyer and president of the Syrian Organization for Human Rights, said the avtivists had been in prisons since between 1981 and 1983.
“We consider the releases, and their timing, as positive signs and a stage toward the release of all political prisoners,” he said. “This signals the willingness of the authorities to close, once and for all, the door on the sad period of the 1980s (of a wave of arrests) and turn it into a distant memory, Hassan said.
Authorities have also banned five human rights activists, including two women, from traveling abroad, the Syrian Organization for Human Rights said yesterday. SOHR said in a statement that the travel ban was “a punishment, or a precautionary measure, that contravenes the Syrian constitution and law, and runs counter to the international legitimacy.”
The ban was issued against Suhair Attasi, the female owner of a so-called “salon,” or political gathering in a private home where Syrian intellectuals discuss democratic reform. The salons sprang up after President Bashar Assad took over from his father in 2000. A year later, authorities cracked down on the gatherings and arrested many pro-democracy activists.
The other woman banned from going abroad is Samar Labwani, wife of Kamal Labwani, a human rights activist who was arrested earlier this year upon his return from the United States on a charge of contacting a foreign country to incite aggression against Syria, SOHR said.
