10/04/12 Students arrested at Aleppo university. #Syria
Official: American arrested in #Syria
January 21, 2012 — Updated 0200 GMT (1000 HKT)
Abdelkader Chaar, 22, is a medical student in Syria, his uncle says.
(CNN) — The U.S. government confirmed Friday the arrest of a U.S. citizen in Syria, a State Department official said.
Consular access has not been provided, said the official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation.
Abdelkader Chaar, 22, is thought to have been arrested in Aleppo, Syria, on January 8.
Chaar was born in Syracuse, New York, moved to Aleppo with his parents when he was a boy and is currently a medical student at Aleppo University, his uncle said. His family has not been told why he was arrested, said Sam Chaar, who spoke to CNN from Arizona.
His family has been in contact with the U.S. Embassy in Damascus and has reached out to Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the elder Chaar said.
News of the arrest surfaced as anti-government ferment raged in the country.
Protesters on Friday focused their attention on political prisoners and demanded the release of detainees. At least 10 people were slain in clashes Friday, according to the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, an opposition activist group.
For more than 10 months, Syria has been in the throes of an anti-government public uprising and a brutal security crackdown against protesters. The United Nations last month estimated well over 5,000 deaths have occurred since mid-March. Opposition groups estimate more than 6,000 people have died.
Also, the Arab League is considering an extension of its monitoring mission to see if the government is adhering to an agreement to end the violence.
The Arab League has called on President Bashar al-Assad’s regime to stop violence against civilians, free political detainees, remove tanks and weapons from cities and allow outsiders, including the international news media, to travel freely around Syria.
Deaths, detentions mount in #Syria, activists say
January 16, 2012 — Updated 1243 GMT (2043 HKT)
Zabadani, Syria (CNN) — The latest bloodshed in the besieged Syrian city of Homs came outside a bakery on Monday, when secret security forces fired indiscriminately on people in line, an opposition activist group said.
Five people were killed and nine others were injured in shooting, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
In addition, security forces raided a university housing facility in Aleppo and arrested nine students Monday, the group said.
Meanwhile, Syrian state-run media said an “armed terrorist group” fatally shot Brig. Gen. Mohammed Abdul-Hamid al-Awwad in the Gotta area while he was headed to work.
And five soldiers died Monday while trying to defect from the army during a firefight between government and opposition forces in Idlib, according to the human rights group reported. Fifteen other soldiers successfully defected, the group said.
The chaos came after Qatar’s ruler became the first Arab leader to suggest Arab troops should intervene militarily in Syria.
In an interview that aired on CBS’ “60 Minutes” on Sunday, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani said, “I think for such a situation — to stop the killing, some troops should go. To stop the killing.”
The desperation to end a brutal government crackdown was evident Sunday, when crowds in a town surrounded by government troops cheered Arab League monitors who visited while others ran out of the town to escape the fighting inside.
Residents of Zabadani, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) northwest of Damascus, lifted one of the monitors onto their shoulders and passed him around the crowd during Sunday’s visit.
They told CNN that their water and electricity had been cut off for the past three days, and they showed off wounds they said had been inflicted by pro-government forces.
The monitors got a different reception from Syrian soldiers, who berated them as the soldiers carried off the body of one of their comrades they said had been shot by opposition forces.
The visit came as another 32 people were killed in several cities by government troops trying to crush a 10-month-old uprising against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad, according to the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, an opposition umbrella group.
During a visit to neighboring Lebanon, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon delivered a blunt message to al-Assad: “Stop killing your people.”
On Sunday, al-Assad announced that he was granting amnesty to anti-government demonstrators for “all crimes committed” since the uprising began in March, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency reported.
The decree applies to people who engaged in peaceful demonstrations, carried or possesses unlicensed weapons or ammunition and draft evaders, SANA said. Fugitives must hand themselves in by the end of the month to benefit from the amnesty, the agency reported.
But fear of arrests or violence by the Syrian regime keep many Syrians on edge.
When the monitors prepared to leave Zabadani, many of the thousands who greeted the monitors in town urged them to stay, warning that attacks by government troops would resume once they left.
Some offered to show the monitors where Syrian tanks were hidden in the fields surrounding the city.
Syria was required to pull heavy weaponry out of the cities under the agreement its signed with the Arab League in November, but Zabadani residents said the tanks pulled back only when the monitors were on their way.
Fares Mohammed, an LCC spokesman, said about 100 armored vehicles had surrounded the city for three days, and that power and water had been cut off as the city faced sub-freezing temperatures.
More gunfire erupted as the monitors left town, and a soldier at another checkpoint rushed out to hammer at their vehicle.
More than 5,000 people have died since mid-March, the United Nations has said. Opposition groups put the toll at more than 6,000. Al-Assad, who has characterized the anti-government protesters as “armed gangs,” says his security forces are battling terrorists intent on targeting civilians and fomenting unrest.
But much of the international community holds al-Assad’s regime responsible for killing dissidents.
“I say again to President Assad of Syria: Stop the violence. Stop killing your people,” Ban said at a conference on political reform and democracy in Beirut on Sunday. “The path of repression is a dead end.”
CNN cannot verify many accounts of what is happening in Syria because the government restricts the activity of journalists, though a number of journalists have been allowed in to the country in recent days to travel with Arab League monitors.
The Arab League mission began December 26 and is expected to conclude on January 19. It has been mired in controversy from the start, from the choice to head the mission — Lt. Gen. Mohammed Ahmed al-Dabi, once the head of Sudan’s military intelligence — to reports that the Syrian government was limiting the group’s access.
