An Arab League observer to Syria who quit the mission after describing it as a "farce" told the Al Arabiya TV channel on Friday that he had left Damascus because he had received several death threats.
Anwar Malek said he received the threats after he announced the Syrian government was still carrying out killings, detentions and torture of those involved in a 10-month-old uprising against President Bashar Assad.
“These threats were the reason why I hastily left Syria," he said.
The head of the Arab League Observer Mission in Damascus, Lieutenant General Mohammad al-Dabi, dismissed Malek's claims on Thursday.
Al-Dabi insisted Malek, who had been posted to Homs, had not left his hotel room in six days and had been “pretending to be sick.”
According to UN data, more than 5,000 people have died in Assad's crackdown on the nationwide protests. Syrian authorities blame the violence, which erupted last March, on armed gangs and say 1,100 soldiers and police have been killed.
