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Damascus (dpa) - Syrian authorities issued an arrest warrant against prominent writer and democracy campaigner Michel Kilo, charging him with "weakening the national feeling and spreading false or exaggerated news," a human rights organization said Wednesday.
National Organization for Human Rights in Syria head Ammar Qurabi said in statement sent by e-mail to Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that Kilo was "referred to prosecutor Ragheed Totenji who issued an arrest warrant against Kilo charging him under articles ... (for which the) punishment ranges from transitional detention to life imprisonment."
The articles list "weakening the national sentiment, arousing racial and ethnic frictions, spreading false or exaggerated news that my affect the state, dispraising the president, courts, organizations, army" as crimes, Qurabi said.
Kilo, 66, a member of the Committees for Reviving the Civil Society in Syria and the Damascus Declaration - the broadest Syrian opposition group - was detained Sunday, days after he signed a petition calling for steps to improve Lebanese-Syrian relations.
The news came after two leading human rights activists were arrested for signing the same petition.
One activist and prominent member of the Committees for Defending Democratic Liberties and Human Rights, Nidal Darwish, was arrested by security police Tuesday at his house in Hasakah province, some 700 kilometres north-east of Damascus.
A statement from the group called his arrest a "blatant violation of basic freedoms ensured by the Syrian constitution."
Some 500 Syrian and Lebanese intellectuals signed the document last week.
Also arrested Tuesday was Mahmoud Marei of the Arab Organization for Human Rights, who was also a signatory of the petition.
Activists have claimed a clampdown by authorities on prominent activists with an increase in such detentions.
Syria would however not confirm the arrests. Authorities rarely issue statements about detentions they deem security matters.
Relations between Lebanon and Syria plummeted after last year's assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, which many Lebanese blame on Syria.
A United Nations probe implicated Syrian intelligence officials in the killing, but Damascus has denied any involvement.
Two months after Hariri's killing, Syria ended its 29-year-old military presence in Lebanon under local and international pressure.
Copyright 2006 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
