Morocco, Syria free prisoners: Muslims celebrating Eid around the world

JAKARTA: Muslims around the world are celebrating Eid-ul-Fitr festival, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramazan.

Eid ul-Fitr, or “the festival of breaking the fast”, begins with the first sighting of the new moon, and it often varies from country to country.Celebrations begin with a special early morning prayer in mosques and open-air spaces and later move on to feasts and festivals.

This year, Eid ul-Fitr comes amid a surge in global food prices exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. Against that backdrop, many Muslims are still determined to enjoy the holiday and the easing of coronavirus restrictions in their countries.

But for others, the festivities are marred by conflict and economic hardship.At the largest mosque in Southeast Asia, tens of thousands of Muslims attended prayers on Monday morning at the Istiqlal Grand Mosque in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta.

It was shuttered when Islam’s holiest period coincided with the start of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, and was closed to communal prayers last year.Meanwhile, Syrian authorities have freed 60 detainees, including some held in regime prisons for over a decade, in a presidential amnesty which also covers terror-related convictions, a war monitor said on Monday.

"About 60 detainees have been released since Sunday, from various Syrian regions, some of whom have spent at least 10 years" in regime prisons notorious for killings and torture, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. President Bashar al-Assad has issued several amnesty decrees during the country’s 11-year war, which broke out after the regime cracked down on mostly peaceful protesters.

But human rights activists said the new decree issued on Saturday is the most comprehensive. The new decree calls for "granting a general amnesty for terrorist crimes committed by Syrians" before April 30, 2022, "except for those leading to the death of a person".

This would mean that tens of thousands of detainees could be released, according to Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman. Many are accused of terrorism offences, "a loose label used to convict those who are arbitrarily arrested", he said.

Syrian activists shared a list of 20 released detainees on social media, including people who wasted for years in the notorious Sednaya prison -- a jail that Amnesty International described as a "human slaughterhouse".

Meantime, Morocco’s king pardoned 29 people jailed for "terrorism or extremism" offences in a gesture marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramazan, the justice ministry announced.

The 29 prisoners were pardoned "after having officially expressed their attachment to the... sacredness of the nation and to national institutions, revised their ideological orientations and rejected extremism and terrorism", said a justice ministry statement issued late on Sunday.