Antara News, Mon, May 16 2011
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Damascus (ANTARA News/AFP) - Syria freed prominent dissident Riad Seif on bail Sunday pending his trial after he was detained earlier this month for allegedly violating a protest ban, rights activist Abdul Karim Rihawi said.
Rihawi, the head of the Syrian Human Rights League, told AFP that an appeals court had confirmed a lower court`s ruling to release Seif, a former MP who is a key figure of Syria`s opposition movement.
Seif was briefly detained in February 2006, only a month after spending almost five years in jail on charges of trying to change the constitution by illegal means.
In 2001, he had been arrested along with nine other opposition figures after the so-called "Damascus Spring," a short-lived period of liberation that came after President Bashar al-Assad took office.
Seif was also imprisoned for two-and-a-half years from January 2008 for having called for "democracy" in Syria.
He belongs to a group of 12 prominent Syrian opposition figures who signed the "Damascus Declaration" calling for democratic reform in the autocratic Arab nation.
Editor: B Kunto Wibisono
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