Spain-based Syrians "harassed" by their embassy

"We're going to wipe you all out," a woman with an Arabic accent told Nur Zene Chaban while she was collecting signatures in support of the uprising against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Madrid's Puerta del Sol two months ago. Chaban is just one of dozens of Syrian residents in Spain who say they have been victims of threats, allegedly coming out of their embassy, since the revolution against the dictator flared up in March.

The Association of Support for the Syrian People (AAPS) sent a communiqué to the Foreign Ministry on July 14 reporting it had suffered harassment by people at the Syrian embassy. "They have photographed us in order to identify us later and so they can punish our families in Syria," it read. Mazen Yaghi, a journalist who left Syria 11 years ago, says visits by secret service agents to his parents' house in Hama have doubled since the revolt began.

The Foreign Ministry says it has not been in contact with the diplomatic representation because no reports have been presented. The Syrian Embassy declined to make any official statement to EL PAÍS. Every Sunday protestors unite in front of Syria's diplomatic legation, near Madrid's Atocha station, to request explanations from a government that has killed around 2,000 civilians, according to the Syrian Human Rights Observatory. "They have us on file up there," says the statement. "They have recorded us from the window."

In Málaga and Granada, where large segments of the 5,016 Syrians in Spain also live, people don't even dare come out on the streets, says Ihab al Oumaoui, president of the Association of Syria Friendship in Granada. "Sympathizers of the regime connected to Rifaat al-Assad live in [both cities]," he says. Rifaat al-Assad has lived in Marbella since he was expelled from Syria in 1984 after trying to depose his brother, Hafez al-Assad, late father of the current president.