DAMASCUS, Syria, June 20 (UPI) -- Syria's political activists and outspoken intellectuals are being successively tried in what some have called an official campaign of intimidation.
The president of the National Human Rights Organization in Syria, Ammar Kurbi, said writer Ali Abdullah and his son were referred to trial Tuesday on charges of slandering government employees.
Kurbi said in a statement sent to the United Press International Damascus bureau that the two defendants will appear before a military court in line with article 48 of the penal code to face charges of slandering state employees in reference to the president of the state's higher security court.
In a similar development, the military court in the central city of Homs held a hearing Tuesday in the trial of political activist Hassan Zeino who is accused of distributing banned publications.
Kurbi said in the same statement that the court was supposed to give the verdict, but the judge decided at the last minute to check with the military judicial authorities in Damascus whether the National Democratic Gathering was not banned which would make its leaflets legal.
Zeino was arrested at a bus station in Homs for the possession of unlicensed leaflets and publications in reference to the Democratic Stance, mouthpiece of the Gathering bloc which groups five unlicensed leftist and national parties.
