SANA: Syria Frees 30 Detained over Unrest
Syria has released 30 people who were detained for their alleged role in an anti-regime uprising, but who have "no blood on their hands," state media said on Saturday.
The move takes to nearly 4,000 the number of people who have been released by the authorities since November, after they had been taken into custody for the same reason, news agency SANA reported.
It comes as a small team of U.N. observers is in the Middle Eastern country to oversee a ceasefire that has been threatened by deadly violence each day since it took effect on April 12.
A truce and the release of political prisoners are among six points Syria's government agreed to under international envoy Kofi Annan's U.N.-backed peace plan to end more than 13 months of bloodshed.
The United Nations estimates more than 9,000 people have been killed in the country since the regime of President Bashar Assad launched a crackdown on Arab Spring-inspired protests that erupted in March 2011.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which puts the overall death toll at more than 11,000, said that another 46 people were killed on Friday, including 29 civilians.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International expressed concern about the fate of a cardiologist, Dr. Mahmoud al-Rifai, arrested in Damascus on February 16 and "believed to have been tortured" for having treated injured protesters.
The London-based rights watchdog raised similar fears about another doctor, Mohammed al-Ammar, whom it said was a peaceful activist detained on March 19 in the southern city of Daraa, cradle of the uprising.
Source: Agence France Presse
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