Syrian troops make arrests in manhunt for defector
BEIRUT (AP) — Government soldiers raided homes and made sweeping arrests Monday in a manhunt for a Syrian attorney general who defected from President Bashar Assad's regime to protest a violent government crackdown on dissent, activists said.
Soldiers demanding information about Adnan Bakkour fanned out in villages near the Turkish border and in central Syria, said Omar Idilbi, a spokesman for the activist network The Local Coordination Committees.
Bakkour's whereabouts remained unclear. The former attorney general for central Hama province appeared in two videos last week declaring his resignation, but authorities said "terrorists" had kidnapped him and forced him to make the recording.
Bakkour denied the government claim in one of the videos.
His defection appeared to be the highest-level so far in the five-month Syrian uprising.
In an audio message posted online over the past day, a man who identified himself as Bakkour said that security forces and pro-regime thugs had attacked his convoy Friday in the Maaret Hirmeh area in Idlib province, killing four people accompanying him and wounding three others.
"I myself was lightly wounded because of shrapnel," he said in the audio recording, adding he was able to escape with the help of other dissidents.
Syria has banned foreign journalists and restricted local media. Activist accounts and amateur videos posted online are vital sources of information, but it is nearly impossible to independently verify the reports.
The U.N. estimates some 2,200 people have been killed since March as protesters take to the streets every week, despite the near-certainty that they will face a barrage of bullets and sniper fire by security forces.
The regime blames the unrest on thugs and armed gangs and claims security forces are the real victims.
Idilbi, the LCC spokesman, confirmed the attack in Maaret Hirmeh Friday, saying a high-ranking leader of the protest movement from the rebellious city of Hama died in the attack on Bakkour.
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The former attorney general for central Hama province appeared in two videos last week declaring his resignation, but authorities said "terrorists" had kidnapped him and forced him to make the recording. Bakkour denied the government claim in one of
After getting his Midwestern pre-campaign bus tour and summer vacation at Martha's Vineyard out of the way, President Barack Obama is getting back to business with a planned speech to Congress this week, unveiling a long-awaited plan
Instead, journalists should focus on some key philosophical questions that get to the heart of what it means to be a conservative in 2011 and how that might shape the decisions a candidate might make as president. In other words, the path to the most
BLACK ROCK CITY, Nev.—The giant Burning Man art festival, in its official manifesto, calls on attendees to exhibit "radical self-reliance" as they camp and frolic on the dry lakebed here for a week every year.
Russell added that “for everyone that was involved in the movie, from the top down, it was more important that we were doing something for God rather than making a movie designed to make a lot of money at the box office. We wanted to make the movie not
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