Syria: Salameh Kaileh arrested

23 April 2012. A World to Win News Service. Salameh Kaileh, a prominent Arab Marxist and political activist from Palestine living in Syria, was arrested by the Assad regime in the evening of 23 April. The news was reported by Nahed Badawiye, a former long-term political prisoner and his ex-wife, who had been with him at the time but is not in custody at this moment. Apparently no public announcement has been made and nothing more is known at this time. Bashar al-Assad's security forces have been rounding up activists and opposition members across the political spectrum, sometimes with no discernible pattern to the timing or targeting. Kaileh was imprisoned for eight years in the early 1990s. Since then he has been refused permission to leave Syria on several occasions and also forbidden to re-enter the country more than once. He spoke at the Paris conference "The Middle East and North Africa – Prospects for Revolution" in May 2011 featuring speakers of a diversity of viewpoints, including the Syrian communist Hassan Chatila; the Iranian activist Shahrzad Mojab from the University of Toronto; Adel Thebat of the Communist Workers Party of Tunisia (PCOT); and Raymond Lotta, writer for Revolution, newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. A source of information for this news service, he gave an interview quoted in AWTWNS120213. He is known as an opponent of both the regime and foreign intervention, an activist in support of the Syrian people's revolt, and an advocate of more radical perspectives for the movement in Syria and the region.