Security forces clashed with demonstrators in Damascus on Tuesday, detaining at least 35 protesters, including a 10 year old boy. The Syrian demonstrators, who demanded the release of political prisoners, ignored a ban on all demonstrations and protest marches in the capital.
Blogger Ahmad Abu Khair was arrested on Sunday morning while driving from Banias to Damascus, it has been reported. Charges are unknown. The arrest came a few days after the Syrian blogger Tal al-Mallouhi was sentenced to five years in prison for allegedly passing information to the United States.
Young Syrian blogger, Tal al-Mallouhi, has been sentenced to five years in prison by a state security court on espionage charges. Mallouhi, who was 18 at the time of her arrest in December 2009, was accused of spying for the US embassy in Egypt and held incommunicado for nine months before her family was allowed to see her. Before her arrest she ran a blog that focused on poetry, social commentary and Palestinian issues. A poem criticising restrictions on freedom of expression in Syria may be the reason behind her arrest, activists have suggested.
Syria has restored access to video sharing website youtube and social networking website facebook. Access to youtube had been blocked in August 2007 and Facebook was blocked in November 2007. Syrians were unable to directly access these websites and could only gain access to them using proxy servers. While internet users in Syria were able to directly access these sites now, the head of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression, Mazen Darwish, would only say that he had “semiofficial confirmation” the ban is being lifted.