KRG court sentences Kurdish-Syrian journalist to 3 years in prison
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – A court in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) sentenced on Monday a Kurdish-Syrian journalist to three years in prison on espionage charges.
Dohuk Court of Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) sentenced Suleiman Ahmad, a Kurdish-Syrian journalist, to three years in prison on charges of alleged membership of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) that is operative in Northeast Syria.
The PYD denied the charges against Ahmad and strongly condemned his arrest saying that Ahmad came to the KRI to work as a journalist.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an NGO based in New York City, urged the KRG authorities to release Ahmad after the Duhok criminal court sentenced him to three years in prison.
“CPJ is alarmed by the sentencing of Syrian journalist Sleman Ahmed, who has been detained for nine months,” said Yeganeh Rezaian, CPJ’s interim MENA program coordinator, in Washington, D.C. “We urge Iraqi Kurdistan authorities to release him without further delay and stop persecuting journalists for their work.”
Ahmad, a Kurd from northern Syria, is an Arabic editor for the local news agency RojNews in the city of Sulaymaniyah, northern Iraq. He was arrested on Oct. 25, 2023 while entering Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) from Syria after paying a visit to his family.
Ramazan Tartisi, one of Ahmad’s lawyers, told the CPJ that the KRG authorities charged Ahmad with espionage on behalf of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), but the journalist denied the charges and plans to appeal.
The charges were “merely a means to retaliate against the journalist,” Luqman Ahmad, another lawyer of Ahmad, told the CPJ. “The court had no evidence for the conviction and the legal process was very unfair.”