A solidarity campaign with Yacoub Hanna Shamoun, a detainee in Syria for more than 20 years

ADO-Damascus: Nobody knows the number of the Syrians detainees forgotten in the dark dungeons of the Syrian prisons . Nobody knows anything about all sorts of torture they undergo throughout long years of detention without any trial , nor does anybody hear about them or their issue, not even their closest family members, particularly amongst the circles of the common people who do not deal with politics or common cause because of the fear of the regime . That is why , the news of the Assyrian youth Hanna Shamoun , detained for more than 20 years in Al-Saydnaia prison , without his issue being raised or his name written down among the lists of the Syrian committees for human rights , came not as a surprise.

The tragedy of Yacoub Hanna began in 1985 , after his return with his family to the homeland from Lebanon where they had gone for work in 1972 . Their return came after the amnesty issued by president Hafez Al-Assad at the beginning of 1985 involving those who had failed to serve military service in Syria . According to this amnesty both Yacoub , born in 1963 and his brother Fawaz born 1966, surrendered themselves to the Conscription Department in Qamishly with an aim of joining the military service and performing their national duty . But the amnesty was a bitter disappointment to them.

On 01/07/1985 late night , a patrol from the State Security Force took both brothers (Yacoub and Fawaz ) from their family house to their headquarters in Qamishly where they underwent for nearly a month all sorts of torture and beating . After that , for many years , nobody heard anything of them until in 1996 when Fawaz was released from prison without any trial , whereas the fate of Yacoub remained unknown till 2001 when one of the security departments informed his family that he was in Saydnaya prison where he had been detained for more than 20 years without trial in violation to all international conventions of human rights signed by Syria.

As a matter of fact , the case of Yacoub with its human legal and juristic dimensions refutes all the allegations of the Syrian authorities about openness, transparency, fairness of trials, independence of judicial system and improvement of human right in Syria.

In view of the human tragedy of the Syrian citizen Yacoub Hanna Shamoun, the Assyrian Democratic Organization in Syria appeals to all human right organizations, societies and committees in Syria, Arab countries and the world at large to demand the Syrian authorities to disclose the circumstances behind the detention of Yacoub Hanna and to refer him to an authorized civilian court of law for an open trial, and further to give him the right to retain a lawyer to represent and defend him against charges- if any -punishable by the Syrian law, or to set him free immediately with the due compensation for the moral, physical and material damage done, to both his brother and him, during this long period of arbitrary detention

We, signatories to this statement : human rights organizations, societies and committees, whether individuals, groups or national figures in Syria and the world, announce our solidarity with this campaign, and demand the Syrian authorities to release Yacoub Hanna, as well as, all political detainees and prisoners of conscience and to put an end to the arbitrary illegal detention and to torture in the Syrian prisons.





Assyrian Democratic Organization-Syria