Brahimi
slams Syrian president
 |
| Out of captivity: Iranian Guards and Syrian women |
President Bashar al-Assad today freed 2,130 of his tens of thousands of detainees,
including 76 Syrian women, to win the release of 48 Iranian Revolutionary
Guards captured by the Free Syrian Army in Damascus last August.
The FSA said the
Iranians had been assisting the Syrian military, but Tehran claimed they were
“Shiite pilgrims” to the Sayyidah Zeinab shrine in the Syrian
capital.
Qatar and Turkey
jointly brokered the swap on Tehran’s demand. It involved the 48 Iranians in
exchange for 2,125 Syrians, 76 of them women, four Turks and one Palestinian.
The 48 Revolutionary
Guards were taken to the Sheraton hotel in Damascus, where the Iranian
ambassador received them, before being flown to Tehran.
Syrian activist @The_47th tweeted: “For
Assad: 1 Iranian = 43.7 Syrians.”
He then re-tweeted “يا ريت كان عندنا نصف مليون إيراني كنا استبدلناهم بحرية ٢٣ مليون سوري” (Arabic for “Wish we had half a million Iranians. We could have won freedom
for 23 million Syrians.”
The exchange
came on the day Syria troubleshooter Lakhdar Brahimi said Assad’s
speech on Sunday was a "lost opportunity" to stop Syria’s killings
and devastation.
Brahimi told the BBC the
address had called for a repeat of previous initiatives that had not worked,
and had been sectarian and one-sided.
"What you need is
reaching out and recognizing that there is... a very serious problem between
Syrians, and that Syrians have got to talk to one another to solve it," Brahimi
added.
The Algerian diplomat
also confirmed reports that Assad had told him when they last met on 24
December that he hoped to run in the next presidential election scheduled for
2014.
However, Brahimi said
this was too far away and that people believed one family ruling a country for
40 years was "a little bit too long".
"Change has to be
real and President Assad could take the lead in responding to the aspirations
of these people, rather than resisting."
