Syrian intelligence has freed Akram al-Bunni, the prominent leftist writer and former political prisoner on Monday, his brother Anwar said on his Facebook page.
Al Bunni was abducted as he left a wedding reception at a central Damascus hotel on Saturday, opposition activists said.
They said Bunni, who had previously spent two decades as a political prisoner, was snatched by agents from an intelligence division run by Hafez Makhlouf, a cousin of Bashar al-Assad.
His brother Anwar al-Bunni, a human rights lawyer who was also a political prisoner for five years, said Akram had riled the authorities by publicly supporting a democratic alternative to the four-decade rule of the Assad family.
“This regime has not been satisfied that it stole 20 years of Akram’s life and the affect that left on his health,” Anwar al-Bunni told Reuters on Sunday from Damascus.
He said his brother had opted to remain in Damascus despite the systematic persecution of dissidents since the uprising against al-Assad erupted with pro-democracy demonstrations in March 2011.
Activists and human rights organizations say tens of thousands of Syrians who peacefully protested against Assad have been arrested since the uprising began and the fate of many of them is unknown.
Fighting in Syria has killed more than 140,000 people - more than 7,000 of them children - according to the Britain-based, pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and is destabilizing the country’s neighbours. With Reuters
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