Syria slaps travel ban on Asad cousin

A Syrian official inquiry into deaths among anti-government protesters has barred two top officials from going abroad, one of them a cousin of President Bashar al-Asad, state media said on Monday. Ateb Najib, a cousin of the president and head of security in Daraa, where protests against the government erupted in mid-March, and Faisal Kulthum, the town's former governor, were both banned from foreign travel. "Immunity is not accorded to those who commit crimes and... the law must be applied," state media quoted the commission of inquiry as saying. Syria's protest movement erupted in, and then spread from, Daraa after 15 students were arrested on suspicion of having written anti-government graffiti around the town on March 15. The students were tortured and their fingernails extracted, Daraa residents said. Mass demonstrations demanding the students' release met with a bloody crackdown by the security forces. Asad formed the commission of inquiry in late March to investigate the deaths in Daraa and others in the Mediterranean coastal cities of Latakia and Banias, as well as in the Damascus suburb of Duma.