Facebook Twitter Google plus Share Share this post Facebook Twitter Google plus close 2.37pm BST14:37 Latest 'defections' Several more senior officers defected from the Assad regime.
President Assad has appointed a new Syrian ambassador to Iraq, replacing Nawaf al-Fares, who defected in July.
This article was amended on 26 September 2013 to remove part of the quotation from Caroline Flint and to make clear that Anthony Nelson defected to the Labour party in 2001.
The wounds within local unionism are deep in Enniskillen, especially after several key Ulster Unionists defected to the DUP at the end of the 1990s in protest at the way Nobel peace prize winner David Trimble pushed the former party towards compromises with former republican enemies.
Moussa Koussa, the former Libyan foreign minister who defected to Britain, is being allowed to leave the country after being questioned by Scottish police about his role in the Lockerbie affair, the Guardian can reveal.
Respect now has five councillors on Bradford council after Asama Javed (Manningham) defected to Respect from Labour last week, accusing the party of breaching "all its fundamental principles".
After the Iraq war in 2003, when Gaddafi surrendered his weapons of mass destruction and renounced terrorism, the key international role was played by the foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, who defected to Britain at the start of the uprising.
Ukip refused to confirm whether the policy job would now be given to Mark Reckless, the former Ukip MP who defected from the Tories and subsequently lost his seat.
Persistent reports that he had defected in August were denied by Damascus, but some opposition leaders say he is apparently under house arrest.
General Ahmed Tlas, who was in charge of contracts in the interior ministry, and Major General Mohammad Hajj Ali from a military academy, have also defected, according to the Saudi broadcaster al-Arabiya [in Arabic].
That SIS representative was none other than Philby, whose treachery led to the deaths of many British agents before he defected in 1963, fearing that MI5 had rumbled him.
