Syrian security forces arrested veteran human rights campaigner Naji Tayara in Homs on Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Tayara has been an outspoken critic of a military incursion into residential neighbourhoods of the city to crush a pro-democracy uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's authoritarian rule. A former political prisoner, Tayara played a key role in a movement demanding political freedoms, known as the Damascus Spring, that was crushed in 2001, a year after Assad succeeded his late father, President Hafez al-Assad.
