Deteriorating health of arbitrarily detained human rights lawyer Khalil Ma’touq

Joint Public Statement

4 June 2013

Syria: Deterioratinghealth of arbitrarily detained human rights lawyer Khalil Ma’touq

New information obtained by humanrights organizations has heightened concerns about the secret detention andfailing health of a prominent Syrian human rights lawyer who has not been heardfrom since his arrest eight months ago.

Khalil Ma’touq, the 54-year-old director of theSyrian Centre for Legal Studies and Research, was arrested along with hisfriend and assistant, 48-year-old Mohammed Thatha, on 2 October last year. Itis believed they were detained at a government security checkpoint on their wayto work in the capital Damascus.

They have been subjected toenforced disappearance as, despite repeated requests from family and lawyers,the Syrian authorities continue to deny they are in custody. Such conditionsincrease the risk of their being subjected to torture or other ill-treatment,which is rife in Syrian prisons, the organizations said.

Two weeks ago, people close tothe two men received a tip-off suggesting that Khalil Ma’touq was indeed indetention and that he was in extremely bad health. His health is seriously atrisk as he suffers from advanced lung disease and has severe breathingdifficulties. He takes regular medication and must be under constant medicalsupervision.

“While this report of KhalilMa’touq’s presence in detention gives his family some sense of his fate aftereight months of silence and denials from the authorities, the reports of hisworsening health are very troubling”, the organizations said.

Because of his human rights workas executive director of the Syrian Centre for Legal Studies, Khalil Ma’touqwas banned from travelling between 2005 and 2011.

He wrote andpublished articles and legal studies in several newspapers and websitessuch as Al-Hiwar Al-Mutamiden. This included a research paper in which heanalysed the connections between the International Criminal Court constitutionand Syria’s Penal Codes.

Family members and colleagues of KhalilMa’touq and Mohammed Thatha have suggested that their current detention may berelated to this human rights work. Shortly before his arrest, Khalil Ma’touqhad returned from a trip to France to obtain medical treatment, which may alsohave raised the authorities’ suspicions about him.

“Khalil Ma’touq must be given allmedical treatment he requires. Both men must be given immediate access to theirfamilies and lawyers; these men are detained for their peaceful work in defenceof human rights and they should be released immediately and unconditionally,” theorganizations added.

In February 2013, in response toa request for information from a group of lawyers, a public prosecutor inDamascus denied that Khalil Ma’touq was being detained. However, detaineesreleased at that time from the State Security branch 285 in Kafr Soussa inDamascus reported seeing him held there during that month.

In April, Khalil Ma’touq’s lawyertold Amnesty International that a State Security officer had informed him ofhis client’s transfer to an Air Force Intelligence branch in late March.

Since the tip-off about KhalilMa’touq’s health earlier this month, nothing further has been heard about himor Mohammed Thatha.

The authorities must urgentlycome clean about the whereabouts of these two men and the legal basis for theirdetention, the organizations said.

Khalil Ma’touq, a prominent humanrights lawyer has providedlegal assistance to many victims of human rights abuses in Syria for many years. He has defended hundreds of politicalprisoners, journalists, and prisoners of conscience, including those tried bythe Supreme State Security Court which fell far short of internationalstandards of fair trial and was abolished in 2011.

In 2012, he was involved in thetrial of human rights defender Mazen Darwish and his colleagues after they werearrested during a raid on the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression(SCM) in February of that year.

Torture and other ill-treatmenthas been widely documented in Syrian prisons and detention centres for decades,and is believed to have caused or contributed to the deaths of many if not mostof the 1,300 individuals reported to have died in custody since March 2011 whenanti-government protests first broke out. The situation has since evolved intoan internal armed conflict across the country.

Tens of thousands of individuals in Syria have been arrested, oftenarbitrarily, in the same period, many of whom remain held, often in conditionsamounting to enforced disappearance. Some have been referred to theAnti-Terrorism Court in Damascus, which began work in September 2012.

The 19 undersigned human rightsorganisations condemn the continued enforced disappearance of Khalil Ma’touqand his assistant Mohammed Thatha, and in light of new and existinginformation, call on the Syrian authorities to:

• Immediately and unconditionally release human rights defender Khalil Ma’touq and his assistant Mohammed Thatha, as they are both detained due to their legitimate and peaceful work in defence of human rights and are therefore considered prisoners of conscience.
• Immediately disclose the whereabouts and fate of Khalil Ma’touq and his assistant Mohammed Thatha to their families;
• Grant Khalil Ma’touq immediate access to any medical treatment he may require;
• Ensure both men are protected from torture or any other form of ill-treatment.

Co-signing organizations in alphabeticalorder:

1. Alkarama Foundation

2. Amnesty International (AI)

3. Arabic Network for Human RightsInformation (ANHRI)

4. ARTICLE 19

5. Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies(CIHRS)

6. Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network(EMHRN)

7. Front Line Defenders

8. Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR)

9. Humanist Institute for Cooperation withDeveloping Countries (Hivos)

10. IKV Pax Christi

11. International Media Support (IMS)

12. LAWYERS FOR LAWYERS

13. Observatory for the Protection of HumanRights Defenders, a joint programme of the International Federation for HumanRights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT)

14. PEN International

15. Reporters Without Borders (RSF)

16. SKeyes Center for Media and CulturalFreedom

17. Syrian Centre for Legal Studies andResearch

18. Syrian Center for Media and Freedom ofExpression (SCM)