Arab League monitor in Syria criticize Sudanese head of mission

January 11, 2012 (KHARTOUM) – One of the monitors serving on the Arab League team in Syria announced his resignation citing failure of the mission to discharge its mandate and criticized its chief General Mohammed al-Dabi from Sudan.

The mission established by the 22-member Arab League was sent last month to verify if Syria is implementing the agreement to withdraw troops from the cities and release political prisoners in the country where the regime has waged a bloody crackdown on opposition protesters since mid-March.

Al-Dabi’s choice was criticized by Syrian opposition and rights groups who say that he led various security organs in Sudan which were accused of being responsible for the arbitrary arrest and detention, enforced disappearance, and torture or other ill-treatment of dissidents.

A member of al-Dabi’s team called it quits yesterday and described the mission as a “farce”.

“I withdrew from the Arab observers’ mission because I found myself serving the regime, and not part of an independent observer group,” the Algerian-born Anwar Malek told the Doha-based news channel Al-Jazeera.

Malek said that the protocol by which the mission was established cannot be carried out in reality and warned of a “devastating civil and sectarian war”.

He also claimed that the Syrian authorities are even killing their own supporters to “mislead” the Arab League mission.

“What I saw was a humanitarian disaster. The regime isn’t committing one war crime but a series of crimes against its people,” Malek said. “Children are killed and they are starved and terrorised.”

The Algerian figure also directed his criticisms at General al-Dabi.

“He [al-Dabi] wants to hold the stick from the middle so as not to upset or anger the authorities [in Syria] or any other party,” he said.

Another unidentified monitor threatened to follow Malek’s suit within 24 hours.

“Even I am trying to leave on Friday. I’m going to Cairo or elsewhere… because the mission is unclear…. It does not serve the citizens. It does not serve anything” he told Reuters.

“The Syrian authorities have exploited the weakness in the performance of the delegation to not respond. There is no real response on the ground.”

The death toll in Syria, which the United Nations says exceeds 5,000, has kept on climbing despite the presence of the observers with the UN announcing Tuesday that 400 people have been killed since the mission began.

(ST)