Syrian President Bashar Assad on Thursday ordered the release of all detainees
arrested in a wave of protests, except those who committed crimes “against the
nation and the citizens,” state media said.
The move came following the
exposure of a document opposition groups said detailed the regime’s intelligence
strategy for clamping down on the month-long uprising.
Syria’s state news
agency SANA said the prisoner release followed a meeting between Assad and
“religious and popular” figures.
Assad also announced a cabinet
reshuffle, but critics said the move means little in Syria, where the executive
and judiciary have been sidelined under 48 years of Ba’athist rule and power is
held firmly by the Assad family and the security apparatus.
The new
government is headed by Adel Safar, who was agriculture minister in the
government of Naji al-Otari that resigned on March 29, more than a week after
protests broke out in the southern city of Deraa and spread to other parts of
the country. The Syrian president retained veteran diplomat Walid Muallem as
foreign minister, appointed intelligence operative Ibrahim al- Shaar as interior
minister and Muhammad al-Jililati, head of the Damascus Stock Exchange, as
finance minister.
Syrian opposition figures revealed a document on
Wednesday purportedly drafted by senior intelligence officials detailing a plan
to infiltrate anti-government protesters and detain and assassinate their
leaders. The document, which a US official said was likely authentic, also
includes plans to blame the country’s unrest on “Zionists” and other foreign
agitators.
The text could not be immediately verified, but the US
official said there was a “strong likelihood” it is real.
“It would not
be surprising if the Syrians are plotting the use of dirty methods to discredit
opponents,” he said.
The document was posted on Wednesday to Facebook,
and a translation provided by NBC News.
“No leniency shall be observed
with regards to smearing the image of our highest symbol” – a reference to Assad
– “regardless of the costs,” according to an English translation.
The
plan, dated March 23, also calls for banning news media coverage of the protests
and punishing those “who convey any news that does not serve the country,”
adding that the security services should “show no leniency in this
matter.”
The document outlines a three-pronged media, security and
political plan to suppress the protests. “Link the anti-regime demonstrations
and protests to figures hated by the Syrian populace such as the usual Saudi and
Lebanese figures, and connecting the lot of them to Zionism and to America,” it
says.
The plan also calls on security agents to work via Facebook to “jam
up” dissent using “pseudonyms” to pose as political dissidents and then gather
intelligence about the opposition. Opposition figures should also become the
target of lawsuits designed to “smear their moral and religious
reputations.”
The text calls for blocking off the locations of political
protests, and inserting civilian- clothed security agents “in an attempt to
cause a state of chaos.”
To further “deceive the enemy,” snipers should
be concealed among protesters and be given the leeway to shoot some security
agents or army officers, “which will further help the situation by provoking the
animosity of the army against the protesters.”
Any areas where the
protests get out of control should be isolated, with the electricity and
Internet links cut off. The plan calls for the “arrest of key influential
figures in that area, and if the situation is critical, to kill
them.”
But the document also cautions that when security forces and
snipers enter protest areas, “the number of people killed must not exceed twenty
each time, because it would let them be more easily noticed and exposed, which
may lead to situations of foreign intervention.”
The state news agency
said snipers killed a soldier on Thursday in the coastal city of Banias, where
authorities had been trying to ease tensions after large protests against
Assad.
Rights campaigners said authorities had agreed to replace secret
police in Banias with army patrols as part of a deal to reduce tension in the
restive city.
The agency quoted a source saying “a group of armed snipers
shot today a number of army members while they patrolled the city of
Banias...One was martyred and another wounded.”
In the capital,
several hundred students marched in a pro-democracy protest at Damascus
University for a second day.
Also on Thursday, Lebanese border police
detained two people trying to drive cars filled with weapons into Syria,
security sources said. “The cars had AK-47s, semi-automatic weapons, and some
bombs,” one security source said. The men, a Lebanese and a Syrian, were
detained late on Wednesday in the border area of the eastern Bekaa
Valley.
David Schenker and Andrew Tabler, Syria experts at the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy, wrote on Thursday that the moment of truth has
arrived for the Assad regime, and that protests following Friday prayers this
week could prove fateful in determining whether it survives. If the government’s
approach so far is any indication, it will undoubtedly be a bloody day,” they
wrote.
“Washington should issue a strong public warning before Friday
that the regime will be held accountable should it respond violently to peaceful
demonstrations.”