Internet-user Abdel Rahman Shaguri released from prison

Reporters Without Borders noted the release from jail of Internet-user Abdel Rahman Shaguri on 31 August 2005 one week after completing his sentence for “publishing lies” but condemned his conviction as “utterly unjustified”. "This man spent more than two and a half years in prison and was tortured just for sending news by email,” the worldwide press freedom organisation said. "We also want to use this occasion to repeat our call for the release of cyberdissident Massud Hamid, imprisoned in Syria since July 2003", it added. Intelligence officials arrested Shaguri on 23 February 2003, for emailing a newsletter taken from the website thisissyria.net, which is banned in Syria. The supreme state security court sentenced him on 20 June 2004 to two and a half years in prison. The charge against him specified that the articles he sent had “harmed the image and security of Syria”. Shaguri served his entire sentence at the Saidnaya military prison where he was reportedly tortured by members of the military secret services. Police arrested journalism student Massud Hamid, on 24 July 2003 and he remains imprisoned at Adra jail near Damascus. He was picked up one month after the publication of photos he took, on 25 June, during a peaceful Kurdish demonstration in front of the Unicef offices in Damascus. The photos were posted on the Kurdish language site amude.com. The state security court sentenced him on 10 October 2004 to three years in prison for membership of a secret organisation and for attempting to “attach a part of Syrian territory to another country”. The young man, who has also reportedly been tortured in prison on several occasions, is now in a very poor state of health.