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Officials arrested Omar al-Asaad, a Syrian journalist and activist, on Sunday evening (3 July) at a funeral for a fellow protester killed in Damascus. Asaad wrote for a number of Arabic newspapers, including Al-Hayat and Aljazeera. Earlier in the year, he exposed a famine affecting hundreds of thousands in north-east Syria, which the government had sought to minimise.
Syrian anti-government protesters in London have received threatening phone calls and house visits from Syrian embassy officials, they claim. Though the protesters cannot be arrested by embassy officials, the government can threaten to detain family and relatives in Syria or arrest them if they return to Syria. The Syrian embassy has denied the claims.
Three armed men seized a Syrian blogger and forced her into a car yesterday evening (6 June), her cousin recorded the incident on her website. Amina Araf, a Syrian-American dual citizen who writes under the pen name, Amina Abdallah, discusses politics and sexuality on her blog, A Gay Girl in Damascus. She has been an outspoken critic of the Syrian government.
Editor’s note: Amina Abdallah has been discovered to be a hoax, perpetrated by Tom MacMaster, a 40 year old American studying for a masters at Edinburgh University in Scotland.
Surveillance and spamming — how the Syria’s embattled regime and its supporters battle protesters on social media. Jillian C York reports
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