U.S. says Syria should release 78-year-old dissident

Syrian dissident Haitham Maleh speaks to Reuters during an interview at his office in Damascus April 14, 2006.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's administration called on Syria on Saturday to release a 78-year-old former judge who was arrested last week and placed under official arrest despite international condemnation.

"We join the United Kingdom, France, and other concerned international parties in expressing our deep concern regarding the detention of human rights lawyer Haitham Maleh by Syrian security services since Wednesday, October 14," the White House said in a statement.

Maleh's arrest is "the latest Syrian action in a two-year crackdown on lawyers and civil society activists," the statement said.

Maleh was interrogated by a Syrian military prosecutor and placed under arrest.

Britain, France and international human rights organizations have called for the release of Maleh, who has for decades opposed Syria's ruling Baath Party and the state of emergency it imposed after taking power in a 1963 coup. In the past he spent seven years as a political prisoner.

"Syria should demonstrate its commitment to international legal norms by releasing Maleh and other Syrian citizens who have been imprisoned solely for seeking to exercise their internationally recognized political freedoms," the White House statement said.

Syria partly emerged from isolation by Western states last year. The government is still under U.S. sanctions, but it has opened trade contacts with several countries, including France, which hopes to sell the national airline billions of dollars' worth of Airbus aircraft.

Lawyers said Maleh's interrogation centered on statements he had made criticizing what he described as repression and rampant corruption in Syria. He was also asked about a phone interview he gave this month to an opposition television station based abroad, in which he called for more government efforts to curb corruption, and a letter he had written to President Bashar al-Assad.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; editing by Mohammad Zargham)