PM:05:05:31/03/2022
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SULAIMANI — Bashdar
Hassan, the head of the defense team for a number of imprisoned journalists and
activists from Badinan, Duhok, said in a press conference on Thursday (March
31) the court of appeals in Erbil has decided to shorten the
sentences of two of the detainees.
The court has cut the
length of two defendants’ sentences, Sherwan Taha and Masoud Shangali, to two
years, Hassan said.
He said the ruling
includes conditional release and procedures for their release will begin next
week.
The fate of most of
the remaining detainees’ cases is still unknown, Hassan said. He stated the Badinan
detainees’ defense team has asked the court to settle their cases at the nearest
possible time.
Taha was sentenced to
two years and three months in prison and Masoud Shangali to three years and six
months in November 2021.
They were convicted on
charges of sabotaging the security of the Kurdistan Region and spying along
with two other activists who were sentenced to shorter terms, Kargar Abas and
Bandawar Ayub.
They had been in
pre-trial detention for over a year prior to their sentencing and their trials
were delayed a number of times in 2021.
Taha and Shangali were
among dozens of people arrested in 2020 in a crackdown following protests in
Duhok against the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) policies.
A number of activists
and journalists were then tried on serious national security charges and other
alleged crimes in what have been widely condemned as politically motivated
trials.
(NRT Digital Media)