Syria's Assad Announces Unprecedented 'General Amnesty'
إقرأ هذا الخبر بالعربية
Syrian President Bashar Assad on Monday announced a "general amnesty" for all "crimes" committed to date, a week after a controversial election held amid raging conflict, state television said.
The amnesty decree is the most wide-ranging since the beginning of a revolt against Assad in March 2011, and for the first time extends to those accused under Syria's controversial July 2012 anti-terrorism law.
The government has dubbed all those opposed to Assad's rule -- armed opposition fighters and peaceful activists alike -- of "terrorism", and used the law to imprison high-profile dissidents.
Should the amnesty be applied, tens of thousands of prisoners held because of their opposition to the regime are expected to be freed.
But rights groups have said previous amnesties were not fully implemented, leaving tens of thousands still languishing in jail.
Previous amnesties had excluded "terrorists" and "fugitives".
A human rights lawyer and activist in Damascus said the decree should extend to both those who have been sentenced and to the many thousands being held without charge in security establishments across the country.
It is also the first amnesty that offers clemency to foreign jihadists fighting for the opposition, as long as they hand themselves in within a month.
State news agency SANA published the full text of the decree, and said those accused of "plotting, meaning those who carried out terrorist acts or set up a group aimed at changing the economic or social... nature of the state" are to be given a full pardon.
Also promised a pardon are those who "plotted to carry out any crime" as listed under the anti-terrorism law, as well as those accused of joining "a terrorist organization or of forcing someone to... join a terrorist organization".
The amnesty also covers those accused of "weakening national sentiment", and people accused of "inciting... an armed rebellion against the authorities".
Also included are those who "promoted terrorist acts" -- terms frequently used by the regime to justify jailing media activists working independently or on the side of the opposition.
Significantly, those who deserted from the army, said the text, will be extended a full pardon if they hand themselves in within three months of the decree.
State television cited Justice Minister Najem al-Ahmad as saying the decree was issued in the context of "social forgiveness, national cohesion calls for coexistence, as the army secures several military victories".
09 June 2014, 15:54
310
Reminds me of all the cease fires his pappy used to annouce while his army was pounding lebanese cities and towns not worth refried beans generated gas discharge.
09 June 2014, 16:53
15
You can't but give this man a good mark in smartness. Having killed more than 200K Syrians and displaced almost half his nation, he's now granting amnesty to criminals. This is a sign that he's in deep troubles and is unable to settle the war in Syria. The war in Syria will go one for decades until the Syrian people vanish each other. assad would then declare victory, assuming that he will be around by then.
09 June 2014, 17:03
54
Wow, great. Now lets see if 1.5M refugees go back to Syria.
If not, then his election is a lie. If not, then it means 1.5M refugees were indeed fleeing the Syrian illegal terrorist and criminal regime.
The only crimes his amnesty will never cover are the crimes committed by Bashar against Lebanon and the Lebanese people to which Hezbollah is partly complicit !
09 June 2014, 17:04
65
PS : Why does Assad needs to announce a General Amnesty when 87.8% of the population voted for him ?
Oh that's right, it's all bullshit and Hezbollah's celebration over their new president Assad was nothing but indoctrinated sheep getting high on crap !
09 June 2014, 18:56
25
Anyone who believes Gaegae is a criminal (but not other warlords) is:
- Baathist Syrian
- Anyone allied with Baathist Syria
- Iranian funded, armed and trained, or Takfiris who want an Islamist State.
- Anyone who fought against the Lebanese army and the Lebanese State during the dark days of the civil war.
09 June 2014, 20:26
21
FT: This is from Amnesty International, on the day that the kangaroo court reached its verdict.
The trial of Samir Geagea, leader of the banned Lebanese Forces, and 12 others for the 1990 killing of National Liberal Party leader Dany Chamoun and his family was seriously flawed, Amnesty International said today.
"We are awaiting a copy of the full verdict which we will study carefully. However, we are concerned that important aspects of this trial did not meet international standards for fair trial," Amnesty International said. These include (here I skip most of the complaints and go to the last one):
- the lack of right to a judicial review of the conviction and sentence, in contravention of the principle set forth in Article 14(5) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Lebanon acceded in 1972.
09 June 2014, 20:43
01
There should be trials for him and also for Jumblat, Berri and all of the civil war era warlords. Those trials should be held at the same standards as the one being conducted at the Hague. I'm not naming HA here because they are already on trial.
But you know and I know that this will not happen. The most we can dream of is a Truth Commission like the one that they had in SA.
As for Geagea's trial regarding the murder of Chamoun, and the church bombing, I am totally convinced that they were flawed and thus null and void.
09 June 2014, 21:02
12
There were atrocities on both sides, Roar.
Dec 6, 1975: The Kataeb set up checkpoints in Beirut and killed anyone who showed a Muslim or Palestinian ID. Hundreds died. We call it Black Saturday.
How many went to trial for that slaughter?
Jan 18, 1976: 600 Christians were slaughtered in Damour. "It was an apocalypse," said Father Mansour Labaky, a Christian Maronite priest who survived the massacre. "They were coming, thousands and thousands, shouting 'Allahu Akbar! (God is great!) Let us attack them for the Arabs, let us offer a holocaust to Mohammad!', and they were slaughtering everyone in their path, men, women and children."
Who went to jail for the Damour massacre?
These are just 2 examples of thousands upon thousands of wholesale massacres, summary executions and wanton bombardments of civilian centers that nobody was prosecuted for.
You want Geagea retried? Fine, I'm with you. But I want the whole can of worms cracked open.
10 June 2014, 03:08
00
Interesting how flamethrower omits Assad from his list of those who attacked the LAF also HA. you are so one sided flamer that you happily call Assad comrad when he has not even pretended to care about his actions in lebanon.
10 June 2014, 10:31
00
Please see this special tribute to Bashar:
http://digg.com/video/right-said-fred-tell-assad-hes-an-asshole-in-song
