(RSF/IFEX) – RSF welcomes the 23 July 2006 release from prison of Massoud Hamid, winner of the 2005 RSF – Fondation de France Internet Freedom Prize, at the end of a three-year sentence for posting photos online of a pro-Kurdish demonstration in Damascus. RSF noted that he had been “frequently ill-treated during his totally unjustified” […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF welcomes the 23 July 2006 release from prison of Massoud Hamid, winner of the 2005 RSF – Fondation de France Internet Freedom Prize, at the end of a three-year sentence for posting photos online of a pro-Kurdish demonstration in Damascus.
RSF noted that he had been “frequently ill-treated during his totally unjustified” sentence and said it was “disgusting” that he had been jailed simply for exercising his right to speak freely.
Hamid, a journalism student, was released a day before his sentence officially ended, and returned to his family home in the Kurdish town of Derbesye, in northern Syria. Scores of villagers went to the house to welcome him despite the presence of police sent there to prevent them from gathering..
He was held in solitary confinement during his first year in Adra prison, in a suburb of Damascus, and was not allowed to see a doctor, read in his cell or wear glasses, which badly damaged his eyesight. He staged several fruitless hunger strikes in protest, suffers from back pain and is due to have tests in hospital.
He was arrested on 24 July 2003, as he was taking an exam at Damascus University. After a mockery of a trial, the state security court sentenced him, on 10 October 2004, to three years in prison for “belonging to a secret organisation” and “trying to annex part of Syria to another country.”
A month before he was arrested, he had sent photos of a peaceful demonstration, which took place on 25 June 2003 in front of UNICEF offices in Damascus, to a German-based Kurdish-language website ( http://www.amude.com ).
Hamid won the Internet Freedom prize on 7 December 2005 and had been adopted while in prison by the Maison de la presse in Charleroi (Belgium), the radio station NRJ (Belgium), The Link (Canada), and Spanish media outlets Varios Foros, Periodicom.com, Interviu, and “El Mundo”, as well as the Colexio de Xornalistas in Galicia.
