Massoud Hamid is a Kurdish Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

n journalism student. He took photographs of a pro-Kurdish event.

He received a three-year prison sentence. Hamid was held in solitary confinement

Solitary confinement

Solitary confinement is a special form of imprisonment in which a prisoner is isolated from any human contact, though often with the exception of members of prison staff. It is sometimes employed as a form of punishment beyond incarceration for a prisoner, and has been cited as an additional...

 in Adra Prison

Adra Prison

Adra Prison is a prison in Syria, on the north-east outskirts of Damascus.Civil prisoners and leading political prisoners are held in the prison. In 2010, the prison held 7,000 prisoners, a dozen of them women...

 for one year from 2003–04 before he was allowed monthly visits, and Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...

 said that interrogators reportedly tortured him and beat him with a studded whip on the bottom of his feet. His room was 2 metre, largely filled by a toilet in it.

He received the 2005 cyberfreedom prize from Reporters Without Borders

Reporters Without Borders

Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...

.