Syria says jailed blogger worked for CIA

[lupercal]

No surprise here, whether you're inclined to believe the AFP headline or not, but what's instructive are the headlines given by other outlets, like BBC-Jazeera, AOL-HuffPo, CiaNN, etc:

Schoolgirl blogger jailed in Syria - Aljazeera.net - ‎Feb 14, 2011‎
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct ... 13714.html

Time for a Syrian Revolution - Huffington Post (blog) - ‎17 hours ago‎
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct ... 24320.html

US calls for release of Syrian blogger - CNN - ‎Feb 12, 2011‎
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct ... etained%2F

Syria: Teenage Blogger Sentenced to 5 Years - New York Times - ‎Feb 14, 2011‎
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct ... rc%3Dtwrhp

Syria blogger Tal al-Mallohi 'convicted of spying' - BBC News - ‎Feb 14, 2011‎
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct ... t-12460163

Syria sentences teen blogger to 5 years in jail - The Associated Press - ‎Feb 14, 2011‎
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct ... 19ab6bc9c2

Free Al-Mallaouhi Now - Voice of America - ‎Feb 16, 2011‎
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct ... 32654.html
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Syria says jailed blogger worked for CIA
(Agence France-Press) – 21 hours ago

DAMASCUS — A young Syrian blogger sentenced to five years in jail, Tal al-Mallouhi, worked for the US spy agency CIA, the foreign ministry said on Thursday.

Held since December 2009, Mallouhi was convicted on Monday for passing on secrets to the United States, Syrian rights groups said.

"We are aware of the protests and we wish to explain the sentence," foreign ministry spokeswoman Bushra Kanafani told a press conference, referring to reactions in the West at the verdict.

"At the age of 15, she was recruited by an Austrian officer of UNDOF (the United Nations observer force in the Golan) who asked her to move with her family to Cairo," where they arrived in September 2006, she said.

In the Egyptian capital, an American spy had introduced Mallouhi to diplomats at the US embassy who allegedly asked her to find information on the work of Syria's mission in Cairo.

The young Syrian was later asked to return to her home country and to dig up details on political prisoners while cultivating ties with security agents and officials, according to Kanafani.

Last October, Syria's Al-Watan newspaper reported that Mallouhi, a high school student at the time of her arrest, was being accused of spying for the US embassy in Egypt.

irony alert:

Washington has denied the charge and called for her "immediate release" while condemning what it called her "secret trial."

"We call on the Syrian government to immediately release all its prisoners of conscience and allow its citizens freedom to exercise their universal rights of expression and association," the State Department said.

Mallouhi, granddaughter of a former minister under the late Hafez al-Assad, father of President Bashar al-Assad, was "held incommunicado without charge for nine months," US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in September.

Security services seized her home computer, CDs and books, HRW said, although her blog, which contains poetry and social commentary, focused on the plight of the Palestinians and did not address Syrian politics.

Syrian rights groups said in late November that Mallouhi was questioned on November 10 by a state security court and returned to a women's prison in Duma, near Damascus.

http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct ... 513f10.681
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[8bitagent]

I remember it turned out a Syrian intel operative named Luai Sakkra was one of the main 9/11 "muscle hijacker trainers", yet also happened to be an informant for the CIA
in 2000. Guess it's always spy vs spy

[Joe Hillshoist]

Wow Hugh was rite.

[lupercal]

And now Syria has its own bona-fide martyr, this time, a 13-year old allegedly tortured by Assad's security forces:
................................
Murdered teenager becomes new symbol for Syrian uprising
By Tony Todd (text) - Latest update: 31/05/2011


Hamza al-Khatib, a 13-year-old Syrian boy who disappeared following an anti-government protest in late April, appeared to have been brutally tortured before his death. Pictures have added fat to the fire in the ongoing Syrian revolt.

Hamza al-Khatib was missing for a month after he was arrested by Syrian security forces on April 29. His parents received his mutilated body last Wednesday after signing a government form saying they would bury him immediately.

But before his burial, video footage of the 13-year-old Syrian’s bruised and bullet-ridden body was posted on YouTube (warning, this video contains extremely graphic images).

Activists on Facebook site Syrian Revolution 2011 allege that Hamza - who disappeared after protests in the flashpoint Deraa region - had been subjected to a horrifying litany of violence. The YouTube footage includes shocking images of the young boy’s broken head and bruised body covered with cigarette burns and bullet holes.

“There were a few bullets in his body used as a way to torture rather than kill him,” the group’s founders write. “Clear signs of severe physical abuse appeared on the body, such as marks made with hands, sticks, and shoes. Hamza’s penis was also cut off.” I don't doubt it, but who specializes in sex-torture again? Oh yeah. See Abu-Ghraib.

By Monday the group, titled “We are all Hamza al-Khatib, the child martyr”, had attracted more than 50,000 members (the English version had almost 5,000) since its creation on Saturday.

Facebook user Wesso Messo posted the message: “We are all Hamza al-Khatib, and we all dream of freedom. Today, because of Hamza, we will achieve this freedom with determination and will. We will not let Hamza’s blood, and that of other martyrs, flow in vain.”

Whereas earlier street protests had mostly been limited to Friday, this time demonstrations over Hamza's killing took place across Syria throughout the weekend - in a sign that the boy’s death may be providing the protest movement with new momentum.

Activists said at least 15 people were killed over the weekend, with many more wounded. The UN on Monday called the latest crackdown “shocking”.

Since the start of the unrest, the Syrian regime has denied visas to foreign journalists, so reports of arrests, killings and the size of demonstrations cannot be independently verified.

Police brutality ‘at the heart’ of uprising

Torture and violent death at the hands of Syria’s security services have been widely documented, but what sets Hamza’s killing aside is his age, and the apparent willingness of the state to inflict brutality on children.

Indeed, Syria’s uprising, which has so far claimed at least 1,500 civilian lives according to rights groups, was in part ignited by the arrest (and subsequent release) of children for spraying pro-revolution graffiti in Deraa.

Nadim Houry, the head Human Rights Watch (HRW) researcher for Syria and Lebanon, said it was impossible to gauge how far Hamza’s death would inspire the future of the rebellion.

“What’s at the heart of all this is police brutality,” he said. “It is police brutality that started [the Syrian uprising] and HRW wants an investigation into this killing.”

Here comes the clue:
By taking Hamza al-Khatib's name as its title, the eponymous Facebook group is following in the footsteps of pro-democracy movements that inspired the ultimately successful revolts of the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia.

“We are all Khaled Said” - again on Facebook - is a group dedicated to the memory of a young man brutally killed, allegedly by police officers, in Alexandria, Egypt.

The media attention proved to be one of the sparks that bought thousands out into the streets demanding - and ultimately bringing about - the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s regime.

The Tunisian uprising also had its symbol, Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor who set himself alight after officials confiscated his wares, and whose death in December 2010 was the catalyst for the fall of the first despotic regime to crumble in the “Arab Spring” revolts.

http://www.france24.com/en/20110530-mur ... n-violence
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. . and here we go again.