DAMASCUS - Syria's state security court jailed 15 Syrian Kurds for up to three years on Tuesday on charges of seeking a breakaway state, lawyers said.| They don't want to breakaway, they want to join something. |
The 15 were initially sentenced to five years in prison but the court reduced the punishment, lawyers said. "This ruling is illegal because it's issued by an unconstitutional court ... I demand the release of the defendants," Bader said. He charged that the trial was based on statements obtained through torture.
The state security court was created under a four-decade-old emergency law that activists say should be ended. They want the court to be abolished and its rulings overturned.
The 15 were arrested last March during a riot in Damascus when Syrian Kurds clashed with police. The riot was triggered by a soccer match brawl in the town of Kameshli. Most of the hundreds of Kurds detained across the country after riots in which about 30 people were killed, were later freed.
In August the state security court sentenced two Kurdish activists to three years in jail on charges of belonging to a separatist group. Several banned Kurdish political groupings in Syria, whose Kurdish community is estimated at