Syria jails four Islamists

0 Comments | AFP, August, 2007

DAMASCUS (AFP) — A Syrian emergency court has handed down heavy jail terms against four members of the outlawed Islamist opposition, a human rights watchdog said on Tuesday.

"The state security court sentenced Yussef Najiat and Muwaffak Farmat to death for membership of the Muslim Brotherhood on Sunday but immediately commuted the sentences to 12 years' imprisonment," the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria said.

"The same court jailed Mustafa Nur al-Din and Ahmed Mansur al-Hilali for six years for belonging to an organization aimed at changing the economic and social nature of the state," the watchdog added.

The Muslim Brotherhood has been outlawed on pain of death since 1980 in Syria but since the mid-1990s death sentences handed down by the...