WarSclerotic

His body, which was returned to his family on Saturday after his arrest on September 6, bore bruises on the chest and signs of injuries to the face, activists cited by HRW said.

Nuland said Matar’s “courage in the face of the Assad regime’s brutal repression is well known in his home of Daraya and across Syria.”

“His brave commitment to confronting the regime’s despicable violence with peaceful protest serves as an example for the Syrian people and for all those who suffer under the yoke of oppression,” she added.

Matar disappeared on the same day as one of his friends, Yahya Sharbaji. The two were detained in a car after a chase by security forces in the Sehnaya district of the capital, according to a relative.

Security forces have arrested over 70,000 people in their crackdown on anti-regime protests that erupted in mid-March, and 15,000 remain in detention, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Assad’s adviser Buthaina Shaaban was meeting Russian top officials in Moscow on Monday.

Russia along with China and other countries are opposed to a Security Council resolution targeting Syria.

The United Nations says more than 2,200 people — mostly civilians — have been killed in a crackdown on almost daily protests by pro-democracy and anti-regime demonstrators in Syria since mid-March.

Nuland renewed US calls for Assad to step down and put an end to the bloodshed.

“We stand with the Syrian people in their resistance to tyranny,” she said.

“We call on the Assad regime to immediately cease all violence against the Syrian people and release all political prisoners. We again call on Assad to step aside and allow the Syrian people to embark upon the democratic transformation they demand.”

In Cairo, the Syrian opposition refused any resolution to the Syrian crisis that would include President Assad, Al Arabiya reported on Monday.

The preparatory two-day meeting for the Syrian opposition concluded in Cairo, with the attendance of an elite of Syria’s opposition members as well as Egyptian opposition representatives.

According to Al Arabiya, the conference chairman Mohi Eddin al-Latheqani said that the Syrian people have the right to gain their freedom and to experience reforms. “The Syrian unity is very good and the Syrian regime has failed to dismantle it,” he said.