Deputy police chief in Syria’s Latakia flees to Turkey

Deputy police chief in Syria’s Latakia flees to Turkey: ANKARA,  (Reuters) - The deputy police chief of Syria's western Latakia city, a brigadier-general, defected and fled to Turkey overnight with 11 other Syrian officers, a Turkish official said today. The police commander ranks as one of the most senior police officers to quit Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's security apparatus and joins scores of other military officers who have defected and are now in Turkey. The Turkish official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not name the deputy police commander but said he came from Syria's Sunni Muslim majority. The officer corps of Syria's security forces are mostly composed of members of Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, which has dominated the power structure in the mostly Sunni country for the last five decades. Alawites control the military through their domination of the officer corps and direct the Soviet-style intelligence and secret police apparatus entrusted with preventing dissent. [...]