Former Syrian Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam called on the European Union to impose sanctions against the Syrian regime and work to release a group of detained students and all political detainees in Syria.
In a letter yesterday to the President of the European Parliament, the Chairman of the Human Rights Committee in the European Parliament, the President of the European Union and the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Khaddam called for taking measures and imposing sanctions against the Syrian regime, which he described as tyrannical. He stressed that the students and political detainees "were sentenced to long prison terms because they demanded guaranteeing public and individual freedoms, achieving democracy, and respecting human rights."
He saw that the Syrian people “are being subjected to extremely harsh repression that totalitarian regimes have not experienced in the past century, by a regime that uses the emergency law to confiscate public and individual freedoms and to repress citizens and throw them in prisons. It has launched its security services to arrest citizens, imprison them, and refer them to exceptional courts that do not provide detainees with the right to Self-defense, under a law that makes its rulings final and final.”
Khaddam noted in his letter that “the last group of Syrian students was subjected to repression and arrest because of its opinions and its call to guarantee public and individual freedoms and achieve democracy in discussions among students at the university. Two students were sentenced to 7 years in prison and 5 others to 5 years in prison.”
He considered that his country's regime "violated, with its repressive practices, all international values and conventions, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."