The defection was reported as anti-Assad activists said that fighting had escalated across the country.
1963 Name of Soviet Spy Revealed WASHINGTON — The mysterious Russian intelligence officer whose defection was reported in London yesterday [July 11] came to the West 18 months ago, it was learned here today.
The disappearance of Ali Reza Asgari, a former deputy defence minister and Revolutionary Guards general, was also generally assumed to be a defection, although reports varied as to whether Israel or the US played the lead role.
The defection, first reported in the Taiwanese press, occurs as the Bush administration is broadly reassessing its policy toward China, especially on strategic issues like how Mr. Bush's commitment to a missile-defense program would affect relations.
The Free Officers of Syria, a group of soldiers and officers who left the army last month in protest of the crackdown and say that they now represent defectors, published an online statement saying that "large" defections were reported in Harasta, another suburb of Damascus and that armed troops loyal to the government were chasing those defectors.
President Sue Decker is clearly in charge of the day-to-day operations of the company, but has remained silent over the last week amid mass executive defections and reports of a looming reorganization.
In Jordan, the state news agency reported that Syria's prime minister, Riyad Farid Hijab, had completed his widely reported defection by arriving in Jordan early Wednesday morning — not Monday, as Jordanian officials and Syrian rebels and activists had all initially reported.
School officials report defections in Florida, Kansas and New Hampshire.
Chapman's defection was first reported by cubaencuentro.com.
One reported defection was of some 4,000 Taliban fighters who were said to have joined the the army of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek warlord, at Mazar-i-Sharif, as he gathers his troops for an offensive.
