Syria jails three Kurds for joining banned party

DAMASCUS - A Syrian court on Sunday jailed three Kurds for three years each for being members of a banned political party, a human rights group said, adding it was the second such verdict in a week.

Mustafa Jomaa Bakr, Mohammed Saeed Hussein Omar and Saadoun Mahmoud were found guilty of being members of the banned Azadi Kurdish party and for having “fueled racial dissension,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The three were also accused of “having undermined the dignity of the state and having weakened national sentiment,” a statement by the London-based rights watchdog said.

The men were all convicted of being senior members of Azadi. Bakr had been arrested in January while the other two were seized in October 2008.

The verdict against them came exactly a week after another Syrian court sentenced four Kurds to six-year prison terms each for belonging to the banned Kurdish Democratic Union Party, according to the Syrian Observatory.

The Syrian authorities routinely accuse clandestine Kurdish parties of separatism even when they campaign for Kurdish cultural and linguistic rights within Syrian borders.

More than 1.5 million Kurds live in Syria, comprising nine percent of the population. They have long sought official recognition of the Kurdish language and culture.