Arab League monitors to visit 3 more Syrian cities

Monitors from the Arab League will visit three additional cities in Syria on Wednesday to gauge whether the country is ending a bloody crackdown on protesters.Observers will visit the flashpoint cities of Daraa, Hama and Idlib, said Alaa Shalaby, a member of the Arab League advance team. They will also spend a second day in the besieged city of Homs. Ahead of the monitors visit in Daraa, violence erupted. Four Syrian forces members were killed and 12 wounded after defectors ambushed their convoy, according to the opposition activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Arab League fact-finding team is monitoring an Arab League initiative that calls for President Bashar al-Assad’s security forces to withdraw from cities, release detainees and end violence.


But a report from Human Rights Watch says authorities have moved possibly hundreds of detainees to military sites to hide them from observers.
“Syria has shown it will stop at nothing to undermine independent monitoring of its crackdown,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Syria’s subterfuge makes it essential for the Arab League to draw clear lines regarding access to detainees, and be willing to speak out when those lines are crossed.”
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem told The Independent last week that the international monitors could move around the country “under the protection” of the government, but would not be permitted to visit sensitive military sites.
HRW said it was told by a Syrian security officer in Homs that his prison director had ordered him to transfer about 400 to 600 detainees from his detention facility to other places.
“The transfers happened in installments,” the official said, according to HRW. “Some detainees were moved in civilian jeeps and some in cargo trucks. My role was inside the prison, gathering the detainees and putting them in the cars. My orders from the prison director were to move the important detainees out,” the official said, according to HRW.
He said that officials told him the detainees were being taken to a military missile factory in Zaidal, outside of Homs.
The Syrian security officer also said the government has issued police identification cards to military officials, according to the human rights group. Providing police IDs to military personnel violates the Arab League initiative, which calls on the Syrian government to withdraw armed forces from cities and residential areas, Human Rights Watch said.
“The Arab League needs to cut through Syrian government deception by pushing for full access to anywhere Syria is holding detainees,” Whitson said.
The observatory team is composed of 12 international monitors, according to a senior official in the league’s advance group. Ten monitors remained in Homs.
More than 5,000 people have died since mid-March, when al-Assad began the crackdown on anti-government protesters calling for his ouster, the United Nations said this month. But activist groups, such as Avaaz and LCC, put the toll at more than 6,000.