Syrian authorities have freed dozens of women prisoners and cleared a prominent young blogger for release in one of the final stages of a three-way hostage deal, a monitoring group said on Thursday. President Bashar Assad's government has released 61 women over the past two days as part of the Qatari- and Turkish-brokered deal, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. A Syrian court also granted amnesty to Tal al-Mallohi, a blogger arrested while in her late teens more than a year before the revolt in Syria began in March 2011, the Observatory said. Mallohi, the grand-daughter of a former minister, was detained for political writing in 2009. The pro-opposition Observatory said her release was imminent.
(photo credit: The Jerusalem Post)