|
NIZAR |
Nizar Nayyouf is currently serving a prison sentence in Damascus for his membership in, and writings for, the banned Committee for the Defense of Democratic Freedoms and Human Rights in Syria. He is being tortured and denied lifesaving treatment until he pledges to stop his political activities.
Nayyouf was born in Syria on May 29, 1962. He graduated from the University of Damascus with degrees in political economy and economic development before beginning his journalistic career as a free-lancer. He was arrested in a massive government crackdown on CDF activists and supporters, during which security forces held his wife Nada and baby daughter Sara hostage to force him to turn himself in. He was tried, together with at least 17 other suspected CDF activists, between Feb. 29 and Mar. 27, 1992, by the Supreme State Security Court. The SSSC, which tries political and national security cases, operates under the state of emergency, not ordinary law, and does not observe constitutional provisions safeguarding defendants’ rights. Nayyouf received the longest prison sentence in connection with a CDF leaflet which detailed Syria’s human rights abuses and allegedly questioned the legitimacy of the December 1991 elections. According to independent observers, the proceedings did not meet with international standards of fairness. The defense lawyers were not permitted to meet with their clients before the trial and the judges ignored claims by the defendants that they were tortured. Apart from Nayyouf, four other CDF members — Muhammad ‘Ali Habib, Thabit Murad, ‘Afif Muzhir and Bassam al-Sheikh — are still serving prison terms handed down by the SSSC during the trial.
Nayyouf spent the first 10 months of his detention in Saydnaya prison, in the suburbs of Damascus, where he attempted to organize a prisoners’ rebellion. The authorities subsequently transferred him to the infamous military prison of Palmyre, in the Syrian desert, where he went on a hunger strike for 13 days in 1993. After smuggling out evidence of the torture inflicted on prisoners at Palmyre, he was again transferred, this time to Mezze military prison in Damascus, where he remains to this day. He has been subjected to the most excruciating forms of torture, including the notorious “German Chair,” a medieval-style rack used to stretch the victim’s spine. He has been thrown into an electrified bath, hung by his feet for two to three hours a day, beaten with an iron pipe or steel cable and urinated on in a mock “baptism” after refusing to pray before a portrait of President Hafez al-Assad.
Nayyouf is now confined to a tiny isolation cell and can move about only by crawling. In a final attempt to break him, the military authorities have made it clear that he will only receive lifesaving treatment if he pledges to refrain from political activity and signs an admission that he made false statements about the human rights situation in Syria. He remains defiant.
Since his imprisonment, Nayyouf has received many international human rights awards, including a Hellman-Hammett grant from Human Rights Watch, the PEN American Center’s Freedom-to-Write Award and the World Association of Newspapers’ 2000 Golden Pen of Freedom Award. He is an inspiration to beleaguered journalists everywhere, and his sacrifice is a reminder that the struggle for freedom of expression can carry a high price.