Syria to lift emergency law, official says
By the CNN Wire Staff
March 27, 2011 -- Updated 1701 GMT (0101 HKT)
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Alleged plot against Syria
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* NEW: Syria will lift 1963 emergency law, information ministry official
says
* NEW: Syrian government asks people to ignore calls for rallies in a
Damascus square
* Violence has been reported in Daraa, Latakia and elsewhere
(CNN) -- Syria will lift its emergency law that has been in place nearly 50
years, a government official said Sunday, as the country grapples with deadly
violence surrounding anti-government protests.
"I can tell you that it will be lifted," said Reem Haddad, spokeswoman for the
Syrian Information Ministry, discussing the law that allows the government to
make preventive arrests and override constitutional and penal code statutes.
It is too early to say when the emergency law will be lifted, she added, in an
interview with CNN.
In effect since 1963, the law also bars detainees who haven't been charged from
filing court complaints or from having a lawyer present during interrogations.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was also expected to address his embattled
nation, amid reports of protesters being shot to death in recent days as they
called for government reforms. It was not clear when Assad would speak.
Violence has consumed recent demonstrations in the restive city of Daraa and
the coastal town of Latakia, according to witnesses.
Violent protests continue in Syria
RELATED TOPICS
* Syria
Syria's state-run news agency, citing an unidentified official source, said the
attacks of "armed gangs" in Latakia over the past two days has led to the
deaths of 10 security force members and civilians and two gunmen. SANA reported
that 200 people, most of them security forces, were wounded by the gangs, which
also attacked a hospital.
Anti-government protests in Latakia had started peacefully Saturday before
several people were wounded in a hail of gunfire as security forces tightened
their control on access to the city, witnesses said. However, presidential
spokeswoman Bouthaina Shaaban told state media that it was an unidentified
group of gunmen that opened fire at citizens and security forces.
CNN could not independently confirm the accounts as the Syrian government has
yet to grant access to the country.
SANA reported Sunday that the interior ministry "is asking everyone not to
respond to inciting leaflets calling for rallies in the Umayyad Square," the
largest and most important square in Damascus. State TV also reported that the
government was warning people not to attend the Sunday rallies.
On Saturday, hundreds of Syrians demonstrated peacefully without security
forces present in the southern city of Daraa where dozens of people were killed
in violent clashes last week.
The protest also served as a funeral site for throngs of mourners to remember
those who died in earlier demonstrations, the witness said.
Friday was marred with reports of casualties in the southern cities of Sanamen
and Daraa where government security forces allegedly opened fire on protesters.
In Daraa, dozens were shot in the head and neck and hundreds more were wounded
when snipers on rooftops began firing into the crowd, according to a doctor in
Daraa who declined to be named for security reasons.
The protesters, who were not carrying weapons, chanted, "We need our freedom,
We need democracy," the doctor said.
In the neighboring city of Sanamen, at least 20 others were killed and more
than 60 people were wounded Friday after government security forces began
shooting at demonstrators, the doctor in Daraa told CNN.
Thousands in Sanamen marched Saturday in what appeared to be a mixture of
political protest and funeral procession as they sought to bury six people
killed in violent clashes earlier in the week, another witness said.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States has no plans to
enter the conflict in Syria as it has in Libya. "Each of these situations is
unique," she said in an interview broadcast Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation."
"Certainly we deplore the violence in Syria, we call as we have on all of these
governments during this period of the Arab awakening, as some have called it,
to be responding to their people's needs, not to engage in violence, permit
peaceful protests and begin a process of economic and political reform," she
added.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, told
"Fox News Sunday" that if Assad attacks his own people, an international
coalition should intervene as in Libya.
"If Assad does what (Libyan leader Moammar) Gadhafi was doing, which is to
threaten and go house-to-house and kill anybody who's not on his side, there's
a precedent now that the world community has set in Libya. And it's the right
one," Lieberman, I-Connecticut, said Sunday." "We're not going to stand by and
allow this Assad to slaughter his people like his father did years ago."
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