Some activists said Mr. Assad's forces had intensified a campaign of deadly violence and intimidation partly because the impending arrival of the monitors may prevent such action in coming days.
The new laws, as well as a sometimes deadly campaign of intimidation against government opponents, have met with rising criticism both within Zimbabwe and from governments abroad, including neighboring African countries.
A newspaper there, the Inquirer and Mirror, reported that he has a lengthy criminal record, with charges of assault with a deadly weapon and witness intimidation.
He said he would talk to the Chinese about having respect for their neighbours, and said: "Coercion, intimidation is a very deadly thing that leads only to conflict.
Several families say the intimidation started soon after the deadly attack on an army school in Peshawar last December.
"The deadly combination of unchallenged liberal presumptions and casual intimidation of dissenters is probably at its worst in the most prestigious universities, which set the tone for the rest of the country, on this issue as on many others".
But the campaign here has been deeply shaken by Taliban threats and intimidation, though several officials said Tuesday that they had never seen such a focused and deadly attack before.
Intimidation denies workers that right and - as Rana Plaza showed - that can have deadly consequences.
A statement from al-Shabaab on Monday said the latest attack – the deadliest since Westgate – was revenge for the "Kenyan government's brutal oppression of Muslims in Kenya through coercion, intimidation and extrajudicial killings of Muslim scholars".
