Surf Arab States

Arab States Weekly Review June 2nd – 8th 2012

In Egypt, former president Hosni Mubarak and his interior minister Habib Al-Adli were sentenced to life in prison for their role in the brutal suppression of protesters in last year’s uprising. Six security chiefs were acquitted and Mr. Mubarak and his two sons were cleared of separate corruption charges. Thousands of protesters gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to express their anger that no one had been convicted of actually carrying out the killings of protesters.

Calls for western intervention strengthened following another massacre of villagers in Syria - at least 78 were said to have been slaughtered near Hama. The Free Syrian Army was reported to have killed at least 100 soldiers after declaring it would no longer abide by the ceasefire called by the UN and the Arab League.

An Iraqi suicide bomber, presumably a Sunni extremist, killed at least 18 people outside the headquarters of a Shia religious foundation in Baghdad.