The state TV announcement did not say how many protesters would be released or how many were being held. It said the release order did not apply to those involved in “criminal acts’’ but that most of those taken into custody would be freed.
The country’s new prime minister, meanwhile, revealed his Cabinet two weeks after Assad fired the previous government in an earlier gesture that failed to contain the unrest.
Violence continued yesterday in a major port city where the government has waged a crackdown on several days of protests.
The state-run SANA news agency reported that snipers fired on a Syrian military patrol in Banias, killing one soldier and wounding another.
Syria’s government and its state-run media have sought to cast the unrest as a foreign conspiracy perpetrated by armed gangs targeting security forces and civilians. Reform activists, however, say their movement is peaceful.
Egypt CAIRO — Egypt’s military rulers said yesterday that they were reviewing cases of young protesters jailed in the aftermath of the popular uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak and that they also sacked several provincial governors appointed by the former president.
The moves were intended to defuse tensions between the military, which took control of Egypt after Mubarak’s ouster, and the protesters determined to keep up the pressure and demand for sweeping reforms.
The Armed Forces’ Supreme Council — the body of top generals that took over after Mubarak’s ouster on Feb. 11 — said in a statement posted on its Facebook page that cases of the young people recently put on trial will be reconsidered.
Activists complain the military has been acting in ways reminiscent of Mubarak’s regime, detaining scores of people and putting protesters in military prisons, where some were reportedly tortured, or on swift trial before military courts.
This week, a military tribunal slapped a three-year prison term on a blogger for charges of insulting the army and spreading false information, further antagonizing the protest movement.
