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only through the wave of organized appeals for reform inside and outside the ranks, but also in the tragic occurrence of suicides, cases of mental illness and hunger strikes among the young conscripts who have failed to obtain the status of conscientious objectors.
There has also been a steady flow of information about prison conditions in France and in her overseas territories. On 15 May 1975, AI Secretary General Martin Ennals sent a letter of appeal to President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in which he asked for the release of three Tahitian pacifists, imprisoned three years ago for their opposition to nuclear tests in French Polynesia.
German Democratic Republic'
For the first time since the 1972-73 amnesty, in which approximately 6,000 political prisoners were released, the number of those detained for political reasons in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) has again reached 6,000. Although the majority of the cases known to Amnesty International are of people sentenced for attempting to leave the country, others, such as five persons arrested for demonstrating for the observance by the GDR of human rights as guaranteed by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, have been adopted. Al groups are now working for 126 prisoners.
In August and September 1974, AI Secretary General Martin Ennals wrote to Minister of the Interior Friedrich Dickel drawing attention to contraventions of the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners in Cottbus and Hoheneck prisons. On 11 November 1974, Mr Ennals cabled the Chairman of the GDR State Council, Willi Stoph, requesting commutation on humanitarian grounds of the death penalty passed on Karl Gorny for alleged crimes committed during World War II. Mr Gorny was executed on 31 January 1975.
No amnesty was announced on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the founding of the GDR, but according to one AI adoptee, he and about 30 other prisoners were released on that date and allowed to emigrate to West Germany. Two United Kingdom citizens, Susan Ballantine and Alan Watson, both of whom were adopted by AI, were released in December 1974 and March 1975 respective- ly after intense pressure and wide publicity.
The Research Department is also investigating allegations that a Syrian nation- al imprisoned in the GDR has been ill-treated. In addition, the department is studying the problem of prolonged solitary confinement which has been applied in certain cases during pre-trial detention.
Federal Republic of Germany
The prolonged pre-trial detention of members of the Red Army Faction, better known as the "Baader-Meinhof group", and the bitter public debate in Germany about their treatment and conditions, led many individuals, both inside and outside Amnesty International, to seek an initiative by the International Secretariat. Al decided not to adopt the members of the group, but, in response to the multiple allegations that the prisoners were being ill-treated and their con-
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