Many Arab countries are severely criticized in a massive catalogue of repressions and execution of political prisoners in various parts of the world, published here by Amnesty International. The annual report by the 15-year-old organization says that more than 100 countries imprisoned people for their beliefs, and denied them fair and prompt trials in 1975/6. In many countries, the prisoners were tortured or executed.
The chapter on the Middle East, including Israel, says that Iran and Iraq give greatest cause for concern, followed by Oman, Syria and Libya. In Saudi Arabia, the Yemen Arab Republic and some Persian Gulf states, there is a lack of information about the plight of prisoners, due to intimidation of the population and legal profession.
Only Egypt and Israel allowed Amnesty International to send observers to political trials in the past year. (In Israel, the trial was that of an Arab nurse charged with membership in El Fatah).
According to the report, there are approximately 2500 Arabs imprisoned in Israel and the occupied territories for alleged security offenses. However, the report fails to confirm or deny allegations of torture by Israel brought to Amnesty International’s attention. Israel is also the only Middle East country out of the 33 states where the Amnesty movement is represented by a national section, although there are individual supporters in six Arab countries.
SITUATION IN EAST EUROPE
In the Soviet Union, where the leaders of the Moscow group of Amnesty International were imprisoned or exiled at the end of last year, about 300 Soviet prisoners of conscience have been “adopted” by Amnesty sections.
In Bulgaria, the report deals with the cases of three Jews who face death sentences on espionage charges. Two of them had their sentences commuted. Dr. Heinrich Spetter was eventually allowed to leave for Israel. But Solomon Ben-Joseph is still serving a 12 1/2-year jail term (reduced on appeal from 15 years).
Last year, Amnesty also heard of another Jew, Nicolas Stefanov Chamurlisky, a clerk in a cooperative, arrested in Sofia in September, 1974. He was charged with espionage on the basis of his contact with an Italian Embassy employe through whom he sent letters to relatives in the United States.
However, his arrest appears to be related to his attempts to obtain a passport and to his openly critical views. He was sentenced to death and in February, 1976 Amnesty International appealed to President Todor Zhivkov urging commutation of the sentence. The appeal was heard by the Supreme Court in March but the result is not yet known. Chamurlisky is being held in the Vratza city prison.
IRAQ HAS HIGH INCIDENCE OF PERSECUTION
In Iraq, where the incidence of reported executions is probably the highest in the Middle East, Amnesty International tried to intervene mainly on behalf of many Kurds and Shia Moslems. Two members of the tiny Jewish community for whom it still works are Shua Soffer and Akram Baher, who were arrested in 1968 and 1969.
Following the Iraqi government’s adoption on Nov. 26, 1975 of a resolution entitling all Iraqi Jews who left Iraq after 1948 to return home and enjoy equal rights with Iraqi citizens under the law. Amnesty appealed to President Ahmed Hassan Al-Bakr for information about Soffer and Baher but no reply has been received. Unconfirmed reports say they may have died in prison.
The report also describes the case of Alexander Leon Aronson, a Jewish male nurse from The Netherlands, who traveled to Iraqi Kurdistan in the summer of 1974 to give medical assistance to the Kurds. He was arrested in March 1975 following the Iraq/Iran agreement and sentenced to death on charges of spying for Israel and acting as an advisor to Kurdish leader Molla Mustafa Barzani. The Dutch government received confirmation only in mid-March 1976 that Aronson had been executed three months previously.
600 PRISONERS IN SYRIA
In Syria, where Amnesty International claims to know of 600 political prisoners, it is currently working on 34 individual cases. Of 286 untried detainees, 79 have been arrested since June, 1975, including Moslem brethren, Communists, Nasserists, Palestinians and Iraqi-faction Baathists.
Former President Nureddin Atassi, who suffers from diabetes, has spent the past six years in Al-Mezze military prison. He and other members of the former regime, also held there, have still not been charged or tried. No news has been received of Albert Elia, former head of the Jewish community in Lebanon, who was abducted to Syria in September 1971.
In Libya, from where torture is increasingly reported, there has been a similar decline in human rights in the past year. In the face of dissatisfaction with his rule, President Muammar Qaddafi has ordered the arrest of all his opponents. Amnesty is working for about 40 Libyans arrested in April 1973 for membership in illegal political parties and still held despite a court order for their release in December 1974. It names three officers believed to have died in prison in March 1976, as a result of maltreatment.
Other Arab countries mentioned in connection with alleged maltreatment of political prisoners are Bahrain, Algeria, the two Yemen republics, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Sudan and Morocco.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
