DAMASCUS — Syria on Sunday freed several dissidents detained in connection with the unrest roiling the country, including prominent opposition figure Riad Seif and rights activist Catherine Talli, rights activists told AFP.

Abdul Karim Rihawi, head of the Syrian Human Rights League, said Seif was ordered released on bail by an appeals court which confirmed a lower court ruling to that effect.

Seif, a former MP and key figure of Syria’s opposition movement, was detained earlier this month for allegedly violating a protest ban.

Talli was detained on Friday on the same charge.

Also released on Sunday were several other militants including Malak Al-Shanawani, a journalist detained April 11, author Ammar Dayoub as well as Jalal Nawfal, a doctor, and activist Ammar Aayrouti.

Syrian authorities in recent weeks have rounded up thousands of anti-regime protesters and activists as they seek to put down an unprecedented revolt threatening the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

Up to 850 people have been killed and at least 8,000 arrested since the protests started in mid-March, human rights groups say.

The regime has blamed the deadly violence on “armed terrorist gangs” backed by Islamists and foreign agitators.

Seif was briefly detained in February 2006, only a month after spending almost five years in jail on charges of trying to change the constitution by illegal means.

In 2001, he had been arrested along with nine other opposition figures after the so-called “Damascus Spring,” a short-lived period of liberation that came after President Bashar al-Assad took office.

Seif was also imprisoned for two-and-a-half years from January 2008 for having called for “democracy” in Syria.

He belongs to a group of 12 prominent Syrian opposition figures who signed the “Damascus Declaration” calling for democratic reform in the autocratic Arab nation.