Emergency law repeal fails to curb Syrias secret police

SYRIA'S feared secret police detained dozens of opposition activists and others in raids launched this weekend, less than a week after president Bashar Assad's regime abolished emergency laws used for decades to crush dissent.

In the coastal town of Jableh yesterday, meanwhile, witnesses said that troops and police opened fire from roof-top positions even though no protest was in progress, killing one person and wounding several others.

The reports said that angry residents later blocked the main road linking the cities of Tartous and Latakia in protest.

The police sweeps, which began late on Saturday night, reinforce opposition claims that the repeal of the nearly 50-year-old state of emergency offers no protection against sudden detentions by Mr Assad's forces.

Ammar Qurabi, head of the National Organisation for Human Rights in Syria, said the arrests concentrated on the capital Damascus and suburbs as well as the central city of Homs, which has been a hotbed of demonstrations against Mr Assad's authoritarian rule.

"These people are not being arrested in a legal way. They are being kidnapped," Mr Qurabi said, claiming the plain clothes security agents did not have formal arrest warrants.

Mr Qurabi did not have full figures for those detained, but said at least 20 people were arrested in Homs. A resident in the Damascus suburb of Douma said at least five people were taken into custody and authorities cut internet and phone connections.

More than 300 people have been killed – including more than 120 on Friday and Saturday – since the uprising against Mr Assad's regime began five weeks ago, according to rights groups. Friday was the deadliest day since the uprising began with 112 killed, rights groups said.

Syria has been ruled for 41 years by the Assad dynasty, who are members of the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. The country's population is majority Sunni Muslim. Mr Assad assumed power when his father, Hafez al-Assad, died in 2000 after running Syria for 30 years.

Yesterday, the state-run news agency SANA said 286 police officers have been wounded since the uprising began. It did not give further details.

The resident in Douma, the Damascus suburb, said authorities tried to force families of three people killed in protests to sign documents that they were victims of an "armed gang". The families refused and hours later the bodies were handed over as tens of thousands of mourners chanted: "He who kills his people is a traitor".

In the southern village of Izraa – where others were killed on Friday – a witness said some men in the village chanted: "May God destroy Assad."

The protest movement has become the most serious threat to Mr Assad's hold on power in one of the most rigidly controlled countries in the Middle East.

Mr Assad has blamed most of the unrest on a "foreign conspiracy" and armed thugs trying to sow sectarian strife. Fears of sectarianism are strong in Syria with the dangers of fractured societies so apparent in neighbouring Iraq and Lebanon.

But possible cracks could be emerging from within.

Two MPs and a religious leader from the southern province of Daraa – where the uprising began – resigned on Saturday in disgust over the killings. They were joined by the two provincial council members who stepped down.

Yesterday, Britain's Foreign Office advised against all travel to Syria.

It added that "in light of the deteriorating security situation, British nationals in Syria who have no pressing need to remain should leave by commercial means."