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Two to die over Syria blast
TWO of 22 defendants accused of involvement in a bomb attack and firefight in the Syrian capital in April were sentenced to death by the state security court today, a lawyer said.The court, whose judgements cannot be appealed, ordered that Ahmad Shlash Hassan and Ezzo Hussein al-Hussein be hanged, the lawyer said, asking not to be named. Two other defendants - Azzam al-Nahar and Abdel-Basset Hassida - were sentenced to forced labour for life while the rest of the accused received jail terms of between one and 20 years. One of the two defendants sentenced to death had been paraded on state television in May confessing to his involvement in the April 27 blast in Damascus. Hassan, a 26-year-old veterinary student, said the bombing had been "a personal act". "I was trying to respond to the aggression against Muslims of oppressive states like Israel, the United States and all the other infidel countries," he said. The blast in late April in a vacant building formerly used by the United Nations in Damascus's Mazzeh diplomatic district sparked a firefight with security forces in which two gunmen, a police officer and a female passer-by were killed. It was claimed by a previously unknown militant group but some US lawmakers suggested the attack was staged by the Syrian intelligence services, a charge vigorously denied by Damascus. The group calling itself the "Martyr Adib al-Kilani Group" said the attack was to avenge the victims of the 1982 bombing of the northern town of Hama to quell the Muslim Brotherhood. A vacant basement of the targeted building belonged to Rifaat al-Assad, a disgraced uncle of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who was in charge of security forces in 1982. Syria is accused by the United States of being a "state sponsor of terrorism" over its backing of Palestinian militant groups and the Lebanese Shiite fundamentalist movement Hezbollah, and has been largely unscathed by attacks. Posted by: tipper 2004-12-30 |
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