Beyond Arms, Syria Uses Arrests Against Uprising DAMASCUS, Syria - After Syrian secret police officers spotted Azam at a peaceful demonstration in the heart of this city, he said, they chased him down and dragged him off to prison, where he was tortured during his 40 days in confinement. "They take people and forget them because there are so many others coming in," said Azam, who asked to be identified by only his first name. He said he had been detained by air force security officers, members of one of more than a dozen secret police services in Syria. While the world's attention has been focused on the military escalation in Syria, the government has also waged an unrelenting campaign of arrests that has snared tens of thousands of people, according to lawyers and activists in Syria and human rights groups. They say the arrests have focused on two groups: secular activists, including those organizing humanitarian aid, and men and boys from the towns that the Syrian Army has besieged or has retaken from the armed opposition. Those arrested, the lawyers and activists say, are dumped into a system devoid of meaningful judicial process or oversight, and are subject to torture. "I'm so upset when I think of how many are inside," said a university student who was detained in April for handing out carnations with tags reading "Stop the Killing." We couldn't protect them. For more than a year, the Syrian uprising has defied efforts for a negotiated resolution, as a peaceful protest movement has evolved into an increasingly armed revolt in the face of a deadly government crackdown. To make sure that the fighters" voices were not the only ones heard, civil society and pacifist activists redoubled their efforts. In response, lawyers, activists and former prisoners said, the government retooled its policing methods to focus on sweeping both potential fighters and peaceful activists and civilians. Removing nonviolent people from the streets, these people said, was aimed in part at depriving the opposition of its more sophisticated members, but also at validating the government's argument that it was fighting only militants and religious extremists. "In the beginning, they were taking everyone and putting them behind bars," said a lawyer who is involved in monitoring and defending these cases. Little by little, they got experience about how to control and who is important and who isn't important. Men and boys have been scooped up from the regions where the government crackdown has been the harshest, people here said. They have been taken from their hometowns while attending funerals, participating in protests or walking in the streets. They have also been arrested at checkpoints if their IDs showed that they were from a town under government siege or under opposition control. Once arrested, former detainees and their lawyers said, they were often forced to confess to possessing weapons. "They need armed people," said a recently released prisoner, who is originally from Sweida and was held for six weeks after being detained in April for attending a demonstration. A report has to be given to the U.N. proving that there are weapons. He said that in jail he met an elderly man named Abu Riad, who he said had been arrested after asking the authorities where his sons were. His three sons, construction workers, had been arrested at a checkpoint as they returned from a job. The men are from Dara'a, the town south of Damascus where the uprising began. When the former prisoner met Abu Riad, he was thin and his body was covered in cigarette burns. By then, the former prisoner said, Abu Riad and his sons had confessed. "All those people inside have confessed to weapons," he said. The second group singled out for arrest includes men and women from the nonviolent civil society movement. This group includes a variety of people: students and professionals; people who have organized aid, outreach or protests; and some who have handed out flowers labeled "Stop the Killing" or unfurled banners in the middle of traffic saying "There is room in Syria for all of us."