Two Syrian Kurdish leaders to be tried in state security court

Published February 10th, 2003 - 03:00 GMT

Two Syrian Kurdish leaders are due to be tried before the state security court in the capital of Damascus for staging a sit-in outside the nation's parliament, one of their lawyers said on Sunday.

Marwan Osman and Hassan Saleh are facing trial on charges of having provoked inter-confessional strife with their December 10 rally for Kurdish rights, their lawyer Anwar Bunni said in a statement.

The security court trial, whose verdict cannot be appealed, "is a step backwards" based on the emergency laws in force in Syria, Bunni said, cited by AFP.

"Lawyers have asked for Osman and Saleh to be deferred to a normal court. They have stressed that the accused are members of the political bureau of the Yakiti party that works in public and in the absence of a law on parties," he added.

The two were arrested in mid-December in the interior ministry where they were to meet Interior Minister Ali Hammud, according to a local rights group, the Syrian Committee for the Defense of Human Rights. (Albawaba.com)