While world is celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the international declaration of human rights and others covenants, the Syrian regime is still carrying on detaining thousands of Arab citizens from neighbouring countries for unpredictable purposes. This detention, in the course of years, has found a serious human suffering to both, the detainees and their families.

According to confirmed reports received by "The Syrian Human Rights Committee", the Syrian security corpses have continuously kept in different prisons and detention centres citizens from Jordanian, Palestinian, Lebanese and Iraqi nationalities in addition to other detainees from Egypt and Western Arab countries. These prisoners were put under arrest upon their entry to the country. Some others were kidnapped from Lebanon where the Syrian security corpses have an undeniable influence. Others were arrested while pursuing higher study in Syrian universities for the mere doubt that they may have any link with opposing political groups.

An investigation carried out by the Syrian Human Rights Committee in 1998 made clear that the Syrian authorities is currently keeping in jail around 1100 political Palestinian detainees, out of whom 650 supporters of PLO leader Mr. Yaser Arafat arrested between 1982 and 1985 in Lebanon during the fight led to the exodus of PLO forces from the Lebanese territories. Those detainees were moved by Syrian military forces in Lebanon and Military intelligence section headed by Brigadier Ghazi Kan’an to prisons in the suburb of the Syrian capital. Some were kept in the infamous Tadmur (Palmyra) military prison. Syrian authorities refused continuously to release them despite all appeals made by human rights organisations and political personalities.

Many residents of Palestinian camps in Damascus, Aleppo, Homs and Hama had been a subject of arrest for fear of links with Palestinian organisations not affiliated to the Syrian regime, or for doubt of link with Syrian Islamic opposition. Families of prisoners have never dared to ask about the place of detention or apply to visit their loved ones. Confirmed information said that some of the Palestinian detainees had been executed in selective operations committed by Syrian security forces during the 1980s. The Syrian authorities constantly refused to disclose any information to put an end to the mysterious situation of these detainees.

Jordanian Detainees in Syrian prisons comes in the second place after the Palestinians. According to the concerned authorities in Jordan, the number of Jordanian detainees in Syria ranges between 700 and 1200. As usual Syrian authorities do not disclose any information in this connection. Most of those detainees were arrested during their study in Damascus or Aleppo universities or in the events of visiting Syria, or even from the transit terminal of Damascus airport.

Syrian authorities had arrested Jordanian politicians from the Ba’ath party/Iarqi faction and others opposing Damascus regime who have been considered as prisoners of conscience. They have never been put to trial, no representatives of international human right organisations were given any permission to meet them. In unusual rare cases few of them were released after 25 years of imprisonment.

A popular and governmental campaign initiated in Jordan last October (1998) was failed to secure the release of these prisoners because Syrian authorities used to ignore all letters, inquiries, attempts or initiative regarding all political detainees in Syrian jails whether they are Syrian or of other nationalities. Officials from Jordanian Foreign Ministry said that letters have been sent to their Syrian counterparts in this connection, and the issue which was discussed on the level of foreign ministers did not come out with any positive end.

Although some detainees have already spent two decades in Syrian jails, Syrian authorities released no more than few scores of Jordanian detainees. One of the released prisoners was Mr. Mohammed Saleem Hammad who spent 11 years in the infamous Tadmur military prison and other detention centres. Mr. Hammad gave a full account of his horrific experience in a documentary book (Tadmur: a witness & a witnessed) in late 1998.

Hammad and others told human right organisations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch about their horrific experiences in Syrian jails. These testimonies clarified the worst human rights violations committed in the dark cells and dormitories of the closed Syrian prisons.

Syrian authorities hold about 700 political detainees from Iraq and Lebanon. Some Iraqis were detained as early as 1980 in the imminence of the severe dispute between Syria and Iraq. The majority of Iraqi detainees in Syria are retailers from the border zone who had been accused of risking the security of the country, but their families explained that these simple people are but retailers in the area where their tribes on both sides of the border reside and have nothing to do with any political action or smuggling. Among the Iraqi detainees, members of Iraq’s Ba’ath ruling party who hold a tense enmity with its counterpart in Syria.

Lebanese detainees are mostly originated from Sunni groups opposed the Syrian intervention in Lebanon or supported the Palestinians during Lebanon civil war, in addition to a big number of Maronite supporters of Brigadier Michael Awn, the ex-head of army who was forced by Syrian forces in 1991 to flee and seek refuge in Paris.

The Syrian Committee of Human rights urges the Syrian government to open the file of all Arab detainees in Syrian prisons and:

	to start dealing with it,
	to stop all security apparatus detaining any Arab citizens without legal evidence or international warrant,
	to ban political arrest and detention of students,
	to pursue legal means to deal with prisoners,
	to give detainees the right of access to a proper legal defence,
	to give permission to representatives of "Red Cross" to meet with detainees,
	to release promptly all detainees not condemned with any clear and actual charge
	and finally to stop torture particularly during inquest and interrogation.