Maher al-Assad

Reuters reports that Syria will set up an investigation into the protest deaths, as well as form a committee to "solve the problem of the 1962 census" during which 150,000 Syrian Kurds were denied nationality. It is doubtful that an investigation will be regarded as hopeful by protesters who blame the violence on Maher al-Assad, brother of the Syrian president, one of his closest advisors and head of the Republican Guard.

While Bashar al-Assad is the public face of Syrian governance, his brother is in charge of the security forces that provide Syria with one of the worst human rights and press freedoms records in the world. One of the many things he is commonly