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Assad's Spy Chief Arrested over Syria Coup Plot
(Telegraph-UK) Ruth Sherlock and Carol Malouf - The Assad regime has placed its intelligence chief under house arrest after suspecting he was plotting a coup. Ali Mamlouk, the head of the country's National Security Bureau, was accused of holding secret talks with Turkish intelligence and Rifaat al-Assad, President Bashar Assad's uncle, who has lived abroad in exile since he was accused of seeking to mount a coup in Syria in the 1980s. Even before Mamlouk's arrest, two other intelligence officials were killed or removed. The role being played in the country's civil war by Iran is said to be a cause of tension, with some of Assad's inner circle afraid that Iranian officials now have more power than they do. "Most of the advisers at the presidential palace are now Iranian," said a source close to the palace. "Mamlouk hated that Syria was giving her sovereignty up to Iran. He thought there needed to be a change." Charles Lister, a Syria expert with the Brookings Institution, said, "Iran appears to be calling the shots now" in Syria.