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Kurdish party official arrested in Syria
DAMASCUS - Syrian authorities have arrested a leading member of a banned Kurdish party, a Syrian rights group said in a statement on Saturday, and pleaded for his release.

Teacher and party official Mohammed Saadun, 50, was “arrested by the state security services' on Thursday in the northeastern town of Qameshli, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Saadun, a father of seven, is on the political committee of the banned Azadi Kurdish party, the statement said.

“The reasons for his arrest and his place of detention are still unknown,' the Observatory said, urging the Syrian authorities “to free Saadun and three members of the Azadi party who had been previously detained.'
The reasons for his arrest are perfectly clear. The stated reasons for his arrest are not known ...
It said Mustafa Bakr, Mohammed Omar and Saadun Sheikho were sentenced to three years in prison in November 2009 on charges of “undermining the dignity of the state, weakening national sentiment and fuelling racial strife.'
Assad should have little dignity at all, but perhaps he and his toadies are just as twitchy about it as any other set of thugs ...
The group urged the government “to free all prisoners of conscience being held in Syrian jails,' and “to pass a modern law regulating the activities of political parties and civil society groups in Syria.'

Kurds represent around nine percent of Syria's population of 20 million.
Posted by: Steve White 2010-05-23
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=297367