Region | Syria
New jail term for leading Syrian dissident
Leading Syrian dissident Kamal Al Labwani has been sentenced to three years in jail on charges of weakening national more, rights activists said on Thursday.
- Agencies
- Published: 15:49 April 24, 2008
Damascus: Leading Syrian dissident Kamal Al Labwani has been sentenced to three years in jail on charges of weakening national more, rights activists said on Thursday.
Al Labwani will serve the term on top of a 12-year sentence he is serving for "inciting a foreign country to invade Syria".
He was put on trial while in prison after inmates allegedly heard him insult President Bashar Al Assad.
"This is a political sentence without legal basis. It is a message to the Syrian opposition that…the regime behind it will keep punishing you," said Ammar Al Qurabi, head of the Syrian Organisation for Human Rights.
Labwani was arrested in Damascus in 2005 after he returned from Washington where he met US officials to raise the issue of human rights in his homeland.
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