Damascus, 17 Oct. (AKI) - Syria's State Security tribunal has sentenced two men belonging to the country's Kurdish minority to two years in jail each for belonging to a banned organisation and promoting secessionist policies. Idris Muhammad and Mustafa Khalaf were found guilty of belonging to the the Kurdish Democratic Opposition Union and of plotting the breakaway of part of Syria from the rest of the country.
The wake of the sentencings, the watchdog group Syrian Organisation for Human Rights, denounced the arrest last week of another Kurdish activist, Adnan Bashir Rasul, a member of the Kurdish Democratic Alliance in Syria, demanding his release. The Kurdish Democratic Opposition Union says some 150 of its members are being held in Syrian jails, many of them still awaiting trial. The Union, which used to be the Syrian branch of the mostly Turkey-based Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), was banned in 1999 by authorities in Damascus after PKK leader Abdallah Ochalan was arrested by Turkish security forces in Kenya. |