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Entries in Kamal al-Labwani (5)

Sunday
Mar102013

Syria Live Coverage: 21 UN Peacekeepers Freed

Release of 21 United Nations peacekeepers at the Jordanian border on Saturday

See also Egypt (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Fighting in Cairo Kills 3 After Port Said Court Verdicts
Saturday's Syria Live Coverage: Regime Shelling Prevents Release of 21 UN Peacekeepers


1826 GMT: View from a Regime Tank. "Tank's-eye" footage of the devasted Damascus suburb of Darayya:

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Sunday
Jan202013

Syria Live Coverage: "Darayya is Being Pounded to Dust"

Al Jazeera's Sue Turton on Syrians decimating forests to survive the winter

See also Algeria (and Beyond) Coverage: Gas Plant Siege Ends with 23 Hostages, 32 Attackers Killed
Saturday's Syria Live Coverage: UN Human Rights Chief Calls for War Crimes Investigation


2029 GMT: A Town After the Bombardment. Al Jazeera English's Basma Atassi reports:

The centre of Salqin in northern Syria looked deceptively normal, just a day after the town came under lethal government air strikes.

Shops were open for business. Residents strolled through the main square. Children could be seen playing in the narrow streets.

Yet a closer look at the streets of Salqin revealed the brutal scars of war. Away from the square, sidewalks were stained with blood and littered with broken glass.

Residents said six people were killed when government forces attacked the rebel-held town bordering Turkey on Friday. Dozens of people were injured, locals said, including many children.

Three siblings --- Basel, 12, Doriyeh, 10, and Raghad, 8 --- were injured by shrapnel as a rocket detonated near their home while they played.

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Monday
May212012

Syria Video Feature: What is the State of the Opposition? (Al Jazeera English)

Last week was marked by tensions over the opposition Syrian National Council, with key groups threatening to freeze their activities or even withdraw in protest. Days after he was re-elected to a three-month term, SNC head Burhan Ghalioun resigned.

Al Jazeera English's Inside Story considers the issues with Bassma Kodmani, a senior SNC figure; Kamal al-Labwani, a Syrian opposition activist and former SNC member; and Joshua Landis, the academic who runs the Syria Comment website.

Monday
Feb272012

Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: A Referendum Amidst the Deaths

Residents of Baba Amr in Homs, under siege for the 24th straight day, stage their version of Sunday's referendum on a new Constitution

See also Turkey Special: The Government Supports a Hyper-Nationalist --- and Threatening --- Protest
Sunday's Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: "I'm So Hungry. I Think I Will Die" --- Then the Line Went Dead


2153 GMT: At the end of the day, the two Western journalists who remain injured in the Baba Amr district of Homs have not been rescued. However, the Red Cross did manage to remove three injured Syrians from the besieged district:

A negotiator in the evacuation efforts said they fell through "at the last minute after ambulances had entered Baba Amr" but declined to specify if regime forces or rebels had blocked the operation.

2146 GMT: The on-line magazine Mother Jones has received a document that they say was leaked from someone inside the Syrian government and contains more than 700 pages of names of activists who have been placed on a government "kill list." A series of experts whom Mother Jones shared the document with believe it is genuine:

Joshua Landis, a scholar on Syria who has consulted for the State Department and other US government agencies, said he thinks the document merges the records of several Syrian intelligence agencies in order to better coordinate the crackdown. "This is what a secret service does," he said. Actions allegedly taken by individuals in the document—such as setting up a roadblock near Homs or issuing instructions about how to attack a Syrian military outpost—are "the kind of thing that people get whacked for all the time, or at least tortured for."

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Friday
Jan202012

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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