DAMASCUS - Syria has detained more than 30 students in the Mediterranean port city of Lattakia since February on suspicion of setting up an underground Islamist group, human rights lawyer Anwar Bunni said Monday.
"More than 30 law and medicine students have been arrested in Lattakia over the past three months," the lawyer told AFP.
"The authorities say the students had set up an Islamist group called Sunaa al-Hayat," he added, condemning what he described as "unlawful arrests" and demanding that the detainees be swiftly charged or released.
The Arab Organization for Human Rights in Syria said Saturday that six students had been detained in Lattakia in April on suspicion of Sunaa al-Hayat membership and condemnded the arrests.
The Arab world's oldest and biggest Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood has been outlawed on pain of death here for a quarter of a century.
Islamists launched an armed uprising in the 1980s, which was the biggest threat to date to the ruling Baath party's 42-year grip on Syrian life.
05/02/2005 12:02 GMT