Syria's Assad offers amnesty for some

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

BEIRUT -- Syrian President Bashar Assad issued a decree Monday granting "a general amnesty" for all crimes except "acts of terrorism," Syrian state television reported, raising tentative hopes among Syrians with relatives in detention.

The government has offered amnesty before, though it did not lead to the release of the tens of thousands of people who human-rights advocates say have been detained or imprisoned during the unrest in the country. But the timing of the latest decree raised hope because it comes just after Assad won a new term in office, and Syrian officials have been hinting that grievances might be addressed.

Opponents and Western officials dismissed the June 3 presidential election as a farce, but Assad's allies claimed it was democratic. Before the balloting, the government tried to calm conditions in the country through localized truces with opponents, a process the government called reconciliation.

Reports about the amnesty decree in the state media did not say specifically whether it would affect the many Syrians who, by the rights advocates' accounts, are being held without charge for political reasons or have been charged with offenses such as delivering humanitarian aid to opposition-controlled areas or attending protests.

State media said the amnesty would include all crimes other than terrorism. Government officials and state media reports have often used the term to refer to any act of resistance against the government. But in recent months, some have begun referring to Syrian insurgents as gunmen rather than terrorists, a softening of language that allowed government officials to make a deal in May allowing opposition fighters to leave besieged parts of Homs, a city in central Syria.

According to SANA, the state news agency, the amnesty decree Monday applied to "foreigners who entered Syria with the purpose of joining a terrorist group or committing a terrorist act," provided they turn themselves in to the authorities within a month. That appeared to be a first: Previous amnesties sought to induce opposition fighters to lay down their arms, as the latest one does, but the previous offers were only for Syrians, especially defectors from the army.

SANA said the decree would eliminate sentences for kidnapping "if the abductor frees the victim safely without taking ransom or delivers the victim to the authorities within a month" of the decree. Kidnapping and other crimes have risen in the three years since the war in Syria began, and the government is under pressure from its supporters to obtain the release of abductees.

Syrian opposition groups say that for any true reconciliation to take place, government officials responsible for indiscriminate attacks on civilians should be held accountable, and foreigners fighting on the government's side, including militants from Lebanon and Iraq, should leave the country.

The amnesty decree appears in most cases to reduce sentences rather than eliminate them, for example by changing death sentences to life with penal labor. Convicts who are older than 70 or who have terminal illnesses will be released, the agency said.

A previous amnesty in 2011 freed a number of militant Islamists from prison. Many of those militants soon joined extremist groups whose actions have undermined the opposition's standing with Syrian civilians and with the West, and some in the opposition say that was the government's intention.

Justice Minister Najm al-Ahmad told state television that the decree Monday was issued in the context of "social forgiveness, national cohesion and calls for coexistence, as the army secures various military victories."

A Section on 06/10/2014