“I do not go into the prisons, but I believe that there are not many prisoners any more,” President Hafez al-Asad said in an interview with the French television station TF-1 in Damascus on July 11, the week before his official state visit to France. Indeed, there were welcome releases during the year of 121 […]

  Human Rights Developments Defending Human Rights HUMAN RIGHTS DEVELOPMENTS   President Bashar al-Asad’s government launched a crackdown on peaceful but outspoken advocates of reform in August, sending a clear message that it would tolerate a political opening only on its own terms and according to its own timetable. Authorities arrested leading critics and others […]