Damascus - Sana
Judge Ammar Bilal, head of the Judicial Experience Office and member of the Legislation Department at the Ministry of Justice, confirmed that Law No. 20, which reorganizes the criminal legal rules for information crime, aims to equalize the punishment with the criminal severity of the act by highlighting some acts that the Syrian society rejects completely.
Judge Bilal explained in a statement to SANA that the acceleration in the technology sector is the reason for the existence of some acts that are not criminalized by previous texts, although they sometimes constitute the basis for a wrong and harmful act, or the old texts may be unclear and the offender benefits from them as a legal loophole, so the legislator and law practitioners had to re-brief the texts To be more suitable for punishment situations.
Judge Bilal pointed out that the law allowed criticism and pointing to defects without transgressing to offend the public administration or those in charge of it in their persons, honor and life.. The state must protect them in the course of their conduct of public affairs without giving them additional authority, indicating that Article 28 Which deals with undermining the prestige of the state, is not as a punishment for the freedom to express opinions, but for the dissemination of false news in particular.
Judge Bilal pointed out that the body authorized to adjudicate in these cases is the previously updated information crime courts, which have an integrated judicial formation and a competent prosecution with new and additional judicial procedures that help preserve evidence and keep us away from chaos, explaining that deleting or modifying content from any service provider can be done By a judicial order, and the process of arrest by the judicial police is only carried out through the competent public prosecutor, and this provides more guarantee for the citizen.
Regarding the sharing of publications and the punishment for them, Bilal explained that not reading the content and treating it rationally imposes on people to clarify the news or the publication, as sharing an opinion or an offensive image that has no justification is sharing the same bad. Interfering with the crime by virtue of the fact that the intervention is with the crime and not after it and does not fall under the clause of tightening the resolve of the perpetrator because this must be before the act and not after it, even if he sympathizes with the error in the event that the publication is bad.
Concerning the smart card, Judge Bilal stressed the need to give it protection because the legislator clarified the mechanism of its use and focused on the illegal use of it to achieve a material benefit if it was lost, stolen or delivered by way of incomplete or emergency possession that is given to a person to complete an order, so he exploits it to do something else is a crime It is punishable by law, pointing out that this also applies to electronic devices whose owners are forced to hand them over for the purpose of repair or to create an email or account on a social networking site, so the recipient exceeds the limits of this work.
Regarding the possibility of making new amendments to the law in the future, Judge Bilal clarified that the practical application of the law is the real criterion that judges work according to, which gives the desired effect of this legislation and the necessity of dealing with it according to an accurate Faisal and what the legislator deems.
President Bashar al-Assad issued Law No. 20 of 2022 to reorganize the criminal legal rules for information crime contained in Legislative Decree No. 17 of 2012.
Yousef Al Haider
