Bashar al-Assad has cut prisoners’ sentences in Syria to mark a national holiday
The move reduced prison terms of inmates held for both crimes and misdemeanours and also cut by a quarter the jail terms of “Syrians who had joined the terrorists” – the term used by the Syrian government to describe the rebels.
The decree was announced on state news agency SANA but it did not say how many prisoners it covered.
Syria is in its third year of a conflict that began as a protest movement against four decades of Assad family rule but has evolved into a civil war that has killed more than 70,000 people.
Several amnesties have been issued since the conflict began but they have done little to satisfy opposition activists who say thousands of political prisoners are held in state detention centres. Many disappeared without notice from state security forces.
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