Syrians in Jordan fear hunt from Assad agents

August 04, 2012

IRBID, Jordan (AP) — Sultan, a 42-year-old Syrian anti-regime activist, knew he was being hunted, even in this northern Jordanian city where he had taken refuge. The attack came on a crowded street: Two men grabbed him and dragged him into a waiting car, shouting, "It's him!"

In the chaos, Sultan says, he recognized the car's driver: a Syrian intelligence officer from the Damascus prison where for three months this year Sultan was jailed and tortured for participating in protests against President Bashar Assad.

"We can finish him in seconds," one of the men shouted, Sultan told The Associated Press, speaking on condition that his full name not be used to avoid further reprisals. In the car, they stabbed him with a knife, slashing his neck and head. But the car got stuck in traffic. When Sultan screamed and pounded on the windows, passers-by and police intervened and rescued him, arresting the four Syrian men in the car.

The attack, in early July, was the latest in a string of similar incidents in recent months that have raised fears among Syrian refugees that Assad's regime is extending its crackdown across the border into neighboring Jordan. Refugees and Jordanian officials believe Syrian regime agents are operating in the kingdom on a campaign to hunt down opponent and intimidate those who have fled.

That has Jordanian officials worried over a potentially more extensive campaign of assassinations or bombings — targeting Jordanians as well as Syrians — as Damascus lashes out against its neighbor in moves that could drag this U.S.-allied kingdom into Syria's civil war. Jordan already faces its more powerful neighbor's growing anger because it is hosting more than 140,000 refugees who fled the 17-month-old conflict, as well as members of the rebel Free Syrian Army fighting Assad's military.

Jordanian political analyst Labib Kamhawi said the kingdom is deeply concerned over Syrian "sleeper cells." "There could be killings, or explosions, or assassinations of Syrians and Jordanian personalities," he said. "There could also be serious border confrontations or incursions."

There has already been one attempted bombing of a Jordanian. Security officials say they arrested a man in June trying to plant a bomb under the car of Jordanian businessman Nidal Bashabsheh, who has been active in helping Syrian refugees. Bashabsheh was visiting an apartment complex in northern Jordan where he is housing refugees when the man was seen putting the bomb under his car, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the press.

There is precedent for more. In 1982, when Syria's regime waged a bloody crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, Syria massed troops on Jordan's border, accusing the kingdom of supporting the Islamists. No attack took place, but there was a wave of assassinations of Syrian Brotherhood activists who took refuge in Jordan. In 1970, the Syrian military carried out a short invasion of northern Jordan to protect Palestinians during a Jordanian crackdown on Palestinian factions.

"Assad is seething with anger at Jordan. It's now like a jigsaw puzzle with all scenarios possible," said Adnan Hamdan, 50, a cleric who worked in Syria's Religious Affairs Ministry until he defected to Jordan last Februrary.

Hamdan, now in Irbid, said he has received dozens of emails, text messages, and telephone calls from people with Syrian accents, warning "me that I will be killed because I have been outspoken in the media, exposing Assad's atrocities against the people."

Traditionally, Jordan's relations with Syria have been strained because of the kingdom's strong alliance with the United States and cordial ties with Syria's arch Israeli enemy under a 1994 peace treaty.

Syria's crisis has only worsened ties. Last year, Jordan's King Abdullah II suggested Assad must step down over the bloody crackdown. Last week, Jordan inaugurated its first refugee camp for the Syrians, an embarrassment for Damascus.

Recent shootings by Syrian troops on refugees at the border have raised Jordanian worries of an incursion, prompting Amman to deploy more troops near the frontier and put air defenses on alert. King Abdullah inspected the frontier and visited with his troops late Wednesday.

In the past few months, Syria has been pressing for the extradition of Syrian army and police defectors, but Jordan declined, according to a security official, who declined to be identified, saying he was not allowed to comment on sensitive state security matters.

Recently, Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh admitted that Jordan has toughened its entry regulations and screening for Syrians to prevent pro-Assad loyalists from operating among refugees. But the attack on Sultan and others like it suggest regime agents are present.

Sultan, who arrived in Jordan in mid-July and works with the FSA, said that before the attack, neighbors in Irbid told him men were asking for him, claiming to have a message from his hometown of Daraa. Terrified, Sultan refused to leave his house for days.

"All I thought of is to find another place to hide," he told The Associated Press. Finally, "I went out for a breath of fresh air and to see the sun," he said. "I thought I'd try my luck, maybe they gave up looking for me."

That was when the attack came. A Jordanian security official confirmed the July 4 attack on Sultan and said the four men arrested from the car were Syrians. The official would not say more about the case and spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

A former Syrian army captain from Daraa who defected and fled to Jordan said he was attacked in the capital, Amman. He arrived in Jordan on May 8 and quickly heard from fellow Syrians that a group of Syrians was asking about him.

Three days later, three Syrian men and a woman approached him on an Amman street and said they had a letter for a Syrian in the neighborhood. They seemed unsure if he was the man they were looking for, since he had grown out his beard and dyed his hair since defecting, said the 34-year-old former captain. When he replied in a Syrian accent, they realized he was their man, he said.

They put two guns to his head, dragged him into a car and drove to an empty lot where they beat him with clubs, he said. "They said the next time, they'd come back to kill me if I don't head back to Syria within a week," he said. "They sped off and left me bleeding from the nose, mouth and head all night."

The captain, his head still creased with the scars, is now in hiding in a city in Jordan's eastern desert. He spoke on condition his name and exact location not be revealed for fear of being tracked down.

In a more mysterious incident, refugees living at the apartment complex run by the Jordanian businessman Bashabsheh reported two attempts to poison the complex's water supply. Three residents and two members of the Free Syrian Army said that on March 17, a pair of Syrians were caught dumping bags of rat poison into the water tanks on the building's roof. Then in June, they said, Syrians gave a resident money to dump pills into the tanks. The resident instead turned the money and the pills over to FSA members in the building, who said the pills were found to be cyanide-based. The FSA members said they believed Syrian intelligence was behind the attempts, but there was no independent confirmation of the incidents.

Jailed Indonesia cleric threatens Myanmar over Rohingya

WARNING: Article contains propaganda!

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August 4th 2012, Saturday / AFP

Jailed Islamist cleric Abu Bakar Bashir threatened to wage war if Myanmar continues to harm Muslim Rohingyas, in a letter to the country's president Thein Sein seen on a website Friday.

The 74-year-old is widely regarded as a spiritual leader of radical Islam in Indonesia -- the world's most populous Muslim country -- and is currently serving a 15-year-jail term for funding terror.

"We've heard Muslims screaming in your country because of your acts of evil...you have taken them out from their homes and are killing them," he wrote in the letter dated July 22, which was passed on to followers and published on the website voa-islam.com.

"If you neglect these calls, by Allah our Lord, you have witnessed the fall of proud and conceited countries in the hands of our mujahideen soldiers," he added.

The letter was confirmed as authentic by Son Hadi, the spokesman for Jemaah Anshorut Tauhid (JAT), a group founded by Bashir in 2008 and labeled a terrorist organization by the United States.

An outspoken supporter of violent jihad, Bashir was convicted in 2010 of financing a terror cell in Aceh province. Earlier this year, the country's top court overturned a lower court's decision to cut his 15-year term.

"You must know that we are brothers as Muslims. Their pains is our pain, their sorrows are our sorrows, and their blood that you shed is our blood too," Bashir wrote. "By the will of Allah, we can destroy you and your people."

Son Hadi said Friday that the letter was submitted on Monday to the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta. The embassy was not reachable for comment.

About 100 Muslim extremists from the Indonesian branch of pro-Caliphate organization Hizb ut-Tahrir protested Friday outside the Myanmar embassy and vow a Jihad to stop the "Muslim cleansing".

"We are ready to die to help our fellow Muslims in Myanmar. A Jihad is the only way to stop this massacre," one of the protesters on loudspeaker told the crowd, who shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest).

Violence erupted in June in Rakhine state, in western Myanmar, between Buddhists and Rohingya, leaving about 80 people dead from both sides, according to official estimates deemed low by rights groups.

Myanmar security forces opened fire on Rohingya Muslims, committed rape and stood by as rival mobs attacked each other during the recent wave of sectarian violence, New York-based Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.

The authorities failed to protect both Muslims and Buddhists and then "unleashed a campaign of violence and mass roundups against the Rohingya", the group said in a report.

Syria opposition plans for post-Assad era

August 03, 2012

PARIS (AP) — The Syrian National Council is deep into organizing an alternative to the regime of President Bashar Assad that could include those already in state institutions or even the ruling Baath Party, a senior member of the opposition group said Friday.

Bassma Kodmani, the SNC's Paris-based spokeswoman, did not exclude a role for Manaf Tlass, the Syrian general who was the first defector within Assad's inner circle but whose motives have raised suspicions.

Assad is fighting to stay atop Syria's hierarchy as he cracks down on an opposition movement — a conflict that has turned into a civil war and which activists say has killed more than 19,000 people since March 2011. The mosaic of religions and groups that make up Syrian society, from Assad's Alawite Muslim sect to the majority Sunnis, compound concerns about infighting and even the disintegration of Syria based on loyalties.

The SNC itself, with members spread across continents, is a fractious lot, and does not include all Syrian opposition activists. But it is considered by nations lending moral and material support to the rebels as the legitimate representative of those opposed to Assad.

"I think the regime has entered the process of collapse," Kodmani said in an interview with The Associated Press. "The vacuum of power at the political level should not happen, and the opposition is currently discussing very seriously and very intensively the shape a transition government should take. The objective here is to produce a Syrian plan, not anybody else's ... that produces a legitimate government."

The "two major pillars" of a transitional authority in a post-Assad era must include both political and military components, Kodmani said, and the roadmap is being prepared "in full coordination with the Free Syrian Army" battling Assad's forces. But "all sectors of society" would have a role, she said.

Civilians who have been mobilizing locally also must be part of a new structure which also would have an all-important legal component so there is "no need for personal revenge." A video which surfaced online this week and appears to show opposition fighters summarily executing Assad loyalists underscores the need to ensure acts of revenge are not part of an already bloody scenario. "I think the legal aspect of it is major," Kodmani said.

Rebel fighters currently hold sections of Syria's largest city and commercial hub, Aleppo, and there is concern a major assault by regime forces is impending. Kodmani said Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other unnamed countries are providing weapons to the Syrian Free Army, whose ranks are being bolstered by defections by soldiers and officers in the Syrian army.

She noted there is "intense debate" within the opposition about the roadmap for a Syria without Assad, but that the process she laid out represented a majority viewpoint and was moving forward. The army and Assad's Baath Party are elements that "need to be part of the transition" — but without leadership roles, she said.

She said the roadmap does not entail a "list of names" and is an urgent "process" due to the quickly evolving situation on the ground. She painted the outlook as favoring the opposition forces, despite Assad's continued grip on power.

Still, the SNC spokeswoman, who has played a key role in the organization since its birth, did not exclude Manaf Tlass from a post-Assad scenario and suggested his role was still being defined. Unlike some opposition figures, Kodmani put a positive face on Tlass, the brigadier general whose defection to France in early July raised hopes, then suspicion, among the Syrian opposition. She said the SNC has had contact with him but refused to elaborate.

Tlass, a childhood friend of Assad and once a commander of the Republican Guard, slipped into obscurity for weeks before appearing on Al-Arabiya TV and again in an interview this week with the Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, offering to help those opposed to Assad.

To those who suspect he wants a star role as the tide turns against the Syrian president, Tlass said, "I did not leave Syria to lead a transitional period." He offered to help unite "all the honorable people inside and outside Syria to put together a roadmap to get us out of this crisis."

Those statements have not satisfied all skeptics, but Kodmani appeared to be laying groundwork for an eventual spot for the one-time Assad loyalist. "Manaf Tlass, he has been a decent person. He has behaved in a respectable way, and he definitely should be part of a big plan of transition and organizing the opposition," she said. "Whether he is in a position to play a leading role, I think that is a different story ... He needs to part of the opposition before he can say 'I will lead the opposition.'"

She did not disclose Tlass' whereabouts, saying only that he is traveling. "I think the terms of his participation in the process of transition are being clarified," she said.