Syria’s president ends 50 years of emergency rule

SYRIAN President Bashar al-Assad yesterday issued decrees ending nearly five decades of emergency law, abolishing state security courts and allowing citizens to protest peacefully, state television reported.

The announcements made successively in news flashes on state television said Assad was ending the emergency law imposed when the ruling Baath Party seized power in 1963 as well as the state security courts.

A third decree said citizens would be granted “the right to peacefully demonstrate” and noted that this is one of the “basic human rights guaranteed by the Syrian constitution.”