Syria, Egypt (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Revolution Renewed

Protests tonight in the Midan section of the Syrian capital Damascus

2050 GMT: Human Rights Watch says defectors from Syria’s security forces have described receiving orders from their superiors to fire live rounds at protesters to disperse them.

HRW issued a statement based on interviews with eight soldiers and four members of secret security agencies. The interviewees said they had participated across the country in the crackdown, including in Daraa, Izraa, Baniyas, Homs, Jisr al-Shughour, Aleppo, and Damascus. They said they had participated in and witnessed the shooting and wounding of dozens of protesters and the arbitrary arrests and detentions of hundreds of civilians.

All the interviewees say their superiors told them that they were fighting infiltrators, "salafists" (hard-line Sunni adherents), and terrorists, but they were surprised to encounter unarmed protesters instead. They said they were ordered to fire on the civilians, including children, in a number of instances.

The defectors also reported that those who refused orders to shoot on protesters ran the risk of being shot themselves. One of them said they witnessed a military officer shoot and kill two soldiers in Daraa for rejecting orders.

Human Rights Watch interviewed the defectors in person in Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan.

2020 GMT: Back from a weekend break to find that Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf has given a brief speech on State TV. The headline is that he suspended all security force officers accused of murders of protesters during the uprising against the Mubarak regime.

Sharaf also said he was coordinating with the Head of the Appeals Court to speed up murder and corruption trials.

The failure to punish those who abused and/or killed demonstrators has been one of the continuing sources of grievance for protests after Mubarak's fall in February.

1600 GMT: The prosecutor in Egypt's second city Alexandria has ordered the arrest of 12 police officers accused of torturing to death a suspect in the New Year's bombing of a church.

The officers allegedly killed Sayed Belal, who was arrested a week after the attack killed more than 20 people.

Activists say Belal's abused body was returned to his family the day after he was arrested.

In another development, Minister of Interior Mansour Essawy has replaced the head of the Security Police in Suez. The decision comes after recent clashes between police and the families of those killed in the uprising against the Mubarak regime. The police chief was accused of helping police officers, including seven released on bail this week, escape justice for the slaying of demonstrators.

1550 GMT: Back from a break to learn, via a reader, that human rights activist Rami Abdel Rahman is reporting that 27 Syrian army tanks moved into the towns of Kafr Haya and Bzabour in the northwest to search the houses of “wanted activists", confiscating computers and cellular phones.

1200 GMT: Apologies for limited service today because of weekend commitments --- we'll be back late afternoon with latest news.

1120 GMT: A coalition of opposition groups has drawn up a draft statement with seven demands to follow up the "Persistence Friday" protests.

1) The immediate release of all civilians who have been sentenced by military court and their retrial before civilian courts. Military trials for civilians are to be totally banned;
2) A special court should be established to try those implicated in the killing of protesters and all implicated police officers are to be suspended immediately;
3) The sacking of the current minister of the interior and his replacement by a political civilian appointee, to be followed by declaration of a plan and time table for the full restructuring of the Ministry of the Interior, placing it under judicial oversight;
4) The sacking of the current Prosecutor General and the appointment of a well respected figure in his place;
5) Putting former President Mubarak and the members of his regime on trial for the political crimes they committed against Egypt and its people;

6) Revoking the current budget and the drawing up a new budget that responds to the basic demands of the nation’s poor, putting that budget to public debate before its adoption;
7) Clear and open delineation of the prerogatives of the Supreme Military Council in ways that do not infringe on the powers and prerogatives of the Cabinet of ministers. The Prime Minister should have full powers to appoint his aides and the members of his Cabinet, once that cabinet is purged of the remnants of the old regime.

Signatories to the joint statement include the Revolution Youth Coalition, the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, the Democratic Front Party, Youth for Justice and Freedom, the Popular Socialist Alliance Party, and the Awareness Party.

1110 GMT: The Thursday-Friday visit of US Ambassador Robert Ford to the Syrian city of Hama, with his declared support for the protesters challenging the Assad regime, continues to resonate. At one point, the top five stories on the website of the State news agency SANA were about the trip.

In his Friday sermon, a prominent State-appointed Sunni preacher, Sheikh Mohammed al-Butti, claimed, “Jihad for the way of God being declared under the American flag. Jihad for the way of God almighty led by the American ambassador. Jihad for the way of God being planned by the American ambassador.”

On Friday, the US State Department maintained the pressure by summoning the Syrian Ambassador to question him about alleged spying activities by his staff.

The State Department said in a press release, "We received reports that Syrian mission personnel under Ambassador Mustapha’s authority have been conducting video and photographic surveillance of people participating in peaceful demonstrations in the United States."

0845 GMT: Human Rights Watch has issued a report expressing concern over the killing of civilians in the fighting in southern Yemen:

Yemeni forces may have killed dozens of civilians in unlawful attacks while fighting an Islamist armed group in southern Abyan province since May 2011. The militants in Abyan, called Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic Law), may have unlawfully placed civilians at risk by deploying in densely populated areas and engaged in looting and other abuses....

The Yemeni government should promptly conduct impartial investigations into credible allegations of unlawful attacks by its forces in Abyan, Human Rights Watch said. Those found responsible for violations of the laws of war that amount to war crimes should be prosecuted and the victims compensated.

In one incident on 4 May, described by seven witnesses in the city of Zinjibar, about 20 members of Yemen's Central Security paramilitary forces opened fire with assault rifles in the city's crowded central market, killing six merchants and shoppers and wounding about 35 other civilians. The incident began when an explosion destroyed a Central Security vehicle stationed near the market entrance, killing four members of the force. Soon thereafter, other officers pulled up in two four-wheel-drive vehicles and began firing at people in the market.

0540 GMT: Perhaps because Friday was so eventful elsewhere, perhaps because the rhetoric is now so predictable, or perhaps because a resolution appears so distant, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi's latest speech almost disappeared yesterday.

The headline of the audio message, broadcast on State TV, was Qaddafi's threaten to send hundreds of Libyans to launch attacks in Europe in revenge for NATO's airstrikes:"Hundreds of Libyans will martyr in Europe. I told you it is eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. But we will give them a chance to come to their senses."

Qaddafi said the Canary Islands, Sicily, other Mediterranean islands, and Andalusia in southern Spain should be "liberated".

Qaddafi was reportedly speaking to a crowd of about 50,000 in the desert town of Sabha, about 500 miles south of Tripoli. He declared, "The Libyan people have no problem, the colonial powers are the ones who have a problem. They want to control our oil. They are jealous because God gave us the gift of oil. We do not fear them. We have no choice but to resist, become martyrs and fight on till the end."

0530 GMT: A photo of this morning in Cairo:

0515 GMT: As James Miller closed the LiveBlog last night, he took stock of a busy day:

Our predictions this morning were pretty accurate. We saw massive demonstrations in Yemen, both for and against President Saleh. We saw a large pro-Gaddafi celebration in Libya because Gaddafi had ordered a single Friday Prayer celebration. We saw massive demonstrations in Suez and Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt.

Perhaps the most important development, however, was in Syria. In Damascus, we saw large protests in the center of the city, and security fired on the crowds, a sure sign that even the capital is starting to turn against the regime, slowly but steadily. In Hama, US Ambassador Robert Ford was described by the Syrian Interior Minister as meeting "with saboteurs in Hama ... who erected checkpoints, cut traffic and prevented citizens from going to work." However, he got a hero's welcome, and nearly 500,000 people peacefully took to the streets with few incidents of security cracking down on the city.

Protests continue tonight in Egypt, and US-Syria relations may have changed permanently.

That's a great summary, but I would take one of the observations much farther. While we expected a large turnout in Egypt for "Persistence Day", pressing claims against the military rulers and calling for real justice against the crimes of and beyond the Mubarak era, we underestimated the event --- not necessarily in size, but in significance.

Both in Tahrir Square in Cairo, the symbolic centre of the demonstrations, and in other Egyptian cities, this was far more than "protests continue". After weeks of disillusionment, setbacks, and tension within the ranks, activists were buoyant yesterday. For the first time since the afterglow of Hosni Mubarak's departure in February, the day had the aura of "anything is possible".