Syria Snapshot: The Defecting Senior Officers in Jordan's Camps (Halaby/Gavlak)

A UN-Run Refugee Camp in JordanIn an isolated stretch of Jordanian desert, a heavily guarded, secret compound houses 1,200 senior police and army officers who defected from nearby Syria.

The men live in trailers with fans but no air conditioning, surrounded by barbed wire, and they pass their days browsing the Internet and watching TV for news of Syria's civil war, longing to join the fight --- but they are largely unable to leave.

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Syria 1st-Hand: Lifelong Dissident al-Labwani "I am Seeing My Long-Time Dreams Come True"

One of Syria's most prominent dissidents, who worked for years against the Assad family regime, stepped out of prison two months ago to discover that his country was aflame with the revolution he long hoped for.

Jailed since 2005, Kamal al-Labwani had heard hints about what was happening on the outside the past year from visitors and even from guards. But prison authorities kept him and other prisoners under an information blackout — no newspapers or TV news over the past 10 months when hundreds of thousands of Syrians were taking to the streets nearly daily despite a relentless and bloody crackdown, demanding President Bashar Assad's ouster.

So he was stunned to see the full extent of the revolt when he was freed in November as part of an amnesty Assad's regime ordered as a reform gesture.

"I am seeing my long-time dreams come true, even better. For years, I dreamt of revolution, change. I was astonished to see it all happening," the 54-year-old al-Labwani told The Associated Press this week in the Jordanian capital Amman, his voice welling with emotion.

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