Riad Seif
| Riad Seif رياض سيف |
|
|---|---|
| President of the National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces | |
|
Assumed office 6 May 2017 |
|
| Preceded by | Anas al-Abdah |
| Vice President of the National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces | |
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In office 12 November 2012 – 6 May 2017 Serving with Suhair al-Atassi |
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| President | Moaz al-Khatib, Ahmad Jarba, Hadi al-Bahra, Khaled Khoja, Anas al-Abdah |
| Preceded by | Office established |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 25 November 1946 |
| Nationality | Syrian |
| Occupation | Vice-president of the National Coalition Former Member of Syrian Parliament Businessman |
| Known for | Democracy Activist Political Prisoner |
| Religion | Sunni Islam |
Riad Seif (Arabic: رياض سيف; born 25 November 1946) is a Syrian political dissident and prominent businessman who founded and lead the Forum for National Dialogue. Seif was elected to the Parliament of Syria in 1994 as an independent and again in 1998. For several years he owned an Adidas franchise in Damascus.
According to Seif, his career in industry started with "a workshop for manufacturing shirts in 1963." In 1993, he began "building the New Adidas Company in 1993 ... the first of its kind in Syria", after acquiring a franchise for Syria from the Adidas Corporation.
Following the death of Syrian leader Hafez al Assad in June 2000, Seif assembled "leading [Syrian] intellectuals and independent voices" to discuss "how to open up Syria's ... political system." The group - which met every Wednesday evening, in Seif's living room and was later dubbed the Forum for National Dialogue - "debated human rights, pluralism, press and academic freedoms, and how to build a civil society," and was the first of several forums that "marked the onset" of the Damascus Spring. In January 2001, Seif announced his intention to create a new political party to compete with the ruling Ba'th Party. Around this time he also questioned the monopoly on the new cellular telephone system granted to the family of Hafez al Assad's wife Anisa Makhlouf. Calling the deal "a big scandal that would cost Syria, an underdeveloped country, millions and millions of dollars", Seif "spoke against it loudly in parliament and forced them to investigate it." After a major meeting of the Forum for National Dialogue on 5 September 2001 which several hundred people attended, Seif was arrested. Charged with "defying the state and trying to change the constitution by illegal means," he was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison and released in January 2006. Since then Seif has told journalists that he and his family have been threatened by Syrian Mukhabarat demanding that he not talk to diplomats or any other foreigners, and that his businesses have been forced into bankruptcy; according to Seif, "It started when they cut off supplies for my factories".
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Wikipedia