Syria: Arab League mission head stirs opposition fears

He says he saw “nothing frightening” in the flashpoint city of Homs.

However, it is Mustafa al-Dabi’s appointment as chief of the Arab League’s monitoring mission that has made opposition activists fearful.

Dabi has held senior Sudanese military and government posts, including in the Darfur region, where the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court says the army carried out war crimes.

The UN says 300,00 people may have died in Darfur, a figure disputed by Khartoum.

Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir has been indicted by the Hague-based ICC for genocide and crimes against humanity. He refuses to surrender, dismissing the charges as baseless and political.

Syria’s opposition fears Sudan’s own defiance of a war crimes tribunal means that Dabi is unlikely to recommend strong action against the Assad regime.

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