a harsh campaign of political repression, culminating in 1980 with the arrest of al-Turk and numerous other party members. Turk was not released until 1998, and became known as one of Syria's most prominent prisoners-of-conscience. Central Committee member George Sabra was arrested during another government crackdown on the party in 1987 and was sentenced to eight years in Sednaya Prison by a state security court. After the death of Hafez Al-Assad The party benefitted from the decreased political repression of the last two years of Hafiz al-Asad's rule and after his death, its members were very active in the Damascus Spring, a brief period of intense political and social debate that flourished in the second half of 2000 and in 2001. During this period, George Sabra, a party member since 1970 and Central Committee member since 1985, represented the party in the National Democratic Assembly, a coalition of leftist parties. Riyad al-Turk was arrested as the government stamped out most of this activity in the autumn of 2001, when he outraged the government's sensibilities by remarking on television that "the dictator has died", in reference to Hafiz al-Asad. He was imprisoned, but later released following international pressure. In 2005, the party held its clandestine sixth conference at which it adopted new rules and changed its name to the Syrian Democratic People's Party, signalling its adoption of western-style social democracy as its ideology, rather than its previous Soviet-style Marxism-Leninism; since the early 1980s, it had been highly focused on democracy issues, and the 2005 conference essentially formalized a development long in being. The same year, party activists co-founded the Damascus Declaration, a coalition of parties, human rights groups and pro-democracy activists named for their document demanding the country's transformation from a "security state to a political state" based on regular free elections, a democratic constitution, the rule of law, pluralism, and individual rights. Party leader Faeq al-Mir was arrested in December 2006 after being taped by Syrian intelligence agents calling Lebanese politician Elias Atallah to offer condolences for the death of Pierre Gemayel, Lebanon's Minister of Industry. Al-Mir was charged with "undertaking acts that weaken national sentiment during times of conflict" and "communicating with a foreign country to incite it to initiate aggression against Syria or to provide it with the means to do so" and sentenced to three years in prison. Amnesty International adopted him as a prisoner of conscience