(RSF/IFEX) – Appalled at the harsh prison conditions of Massud Hamed, RSF has urged Arab League Secretary General Amre Moussa to intervene with the Syrian authorities on his behalf. Hamed, a 29-year-old journalism student jailed since July 2003, has been regularly tortured in prison and is now in a very poor state of health. “Massud […]
(RSF/IFEX) – Appalled at the harsh prison conditions of Massud Hamed, RSF has urged Arab League Secretary General Amre Moussa to intervene with the Syrian authorities on his behalf.
Hamed, a 29-year-old journalism student jailed since July 2003, has been regularly tortured in prison and is now in a very poor state of health.
“Massud Hamed has been subjected to the barbarity of his Syrian jailers for almost two years. His only crime was to have taken photos of a peaceful demonstration and posted them online,” the organisation said in a letter to the Arab League.
“The Arab League cannot close its eyes to abuses of this kind committed by one of its members. Mr Amre Moussa, as a lawyer, you will certainly be responsive to the fact that Massoud Hamed has been sentenced to three years in prison without ever seeing his lawyer,” RSF said.
Hamed is detained at Adra Prison, in the Damascus suburbs, a jail run by Abu Shaghi. Local sources that prefer to remain anonymous said that the journalist spent his first year in solitary confinement and has only been in a cell with other prisoners for the past eight months.
They report that Hamed was repeatedly tortured in the months following his arrest, chiefly by being beaten on the soles of his feet with a studded whip, which has left him with his feet completely paralysed. He also suffers from vertigo and headaches and his eyesight is failing because he has not been allowed to wear his glasses.
Hamed sees his family once a month for 10 minutes. He has never been allowed to see his lawyer, Faisal Bedir, who has made several requests to appeal against his client’s sentence but has received no reply from the Syrian judicial system.
