ALexander Touma, Investigate Journalist and writer
On April 7, 2018 there was an alleged gas attack on civilians in Douma, Syria. When unverified amateur videos emerged on the TV globally and on social media, the world was quick to blame the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad.
Russia would later be blamed as well, because they were in Syria fighting against Al Qeada, ISIS and other Radical Islamic terrorist groups. The US, NATO, EU and other western nations were backing the armed opposition, who were following the same extremist ideology as the known terrorist groups.
While Russia has been in Syria since 2015, and still has a presence there under the new transitional government, Russia has never deliberately covered up any crimes.
On April 17, 2018, the famous British journalist Robert Fisk arrived in Douma. He was based in Beirut, reporting on the Middle East for “The Independent”. He walked the streets, visited the hospital, spoke with doctors and residents there, and was surprised at their eye witness accounts of the attack.
“I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of shelling [by government forces] and aircraft were always over Douma at night – but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived. People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a “White Helmet”, shouted “Gas!”, and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia – not gas poisoning,” said Dr. Assim Rahaibani.
Fisk couldn’t find anyone who could confirm a gas attack, but a resident said the White Helmets, who created the video, had all left Douma for safe haven in Idlib along with armed groups.
Fisk was ridiculed for writing a truthful report on his actual visit to Douma, while his critics sat far away in London and Washington.
On May 23, 2019, Fisk wrote another article on the Douma attack, but this one was criticizing the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW.
Fisk found that the OPCW deliberately concealed the existence of a dissenting 15-page assessment of two cylinders which had supposedly contained molecular chlorine.
The OPCW officially said that these canisters were probably dropped a helicopter, presumably Syrian on Douma on April 7, 2018. But the dissenting assessment, which the OPCW hid, found there is a “higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being delivered from aircraft”.
The OPCW was manipulating the evidence found by the investigators. This manipulation and deception must have been for political purposes, to discredit Syria and Russia.
Ian Henderson was a former, long-serving OPCW inspector and team leader in Douma in 2018.
In February 2019, his findings “Engineering Assessment” were leaked, which suggested cylinders were placed manually, not dropped from aircraft.
Then-OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias defended the final report, dismissing the dissenting views of Henderson as "erroneous, uninformed, and wrong”.
Henderson observed that the holes seen in the concrete could not have been made by the cylinders falling from the sky, implying that rebels had placed the cylinders there.
Using computer simulations, Henderson suggested that the cylinder would have carried enough energy to do so if dropped from a height of more than 1,600 feet.
As for the second cylinder, found in a bedroom of a different building after apparently making a hole in the roof, Henderson wrote that “it was not possible to establish a set of circumstances” in which the cylinder could have passed through the hole without sustaining further damage beyond what was observed.
“The dimensions, characteristics and appearance of the cylinders and the surrounding scene of the incidents,” he concluded, “were inconsistent with what would have been expected in the case of either cylinder having been delivered from an aircraft.” He also suggested the cylinder was too long to have passed through the hole above it.
In the training of legal professionals, they always say, if you catch a person in one lie, that may indicate the rest of what they say is lies. The OPCW was caught red-handed in a lie, to deliberately omit the very detailed objections by Henderson, a highly qualified investigator.
When President Obama gave his famous speech, promising US military intervention in Syria to remove Assad, if a “Red Line” of chemical use was crossed, the armed opposition to Assad took that as a “Green Light”.
The rebels had access to chemicals and could stage attacks, and with videos uploaded on social media, they had the world on their side.
In December 2016, the armed groups holding East Aleppo were driven out, and they went to Idib for a safe haven. CNN’s Fred Pleitgen was in East Aleppo legally with the Syrian Arab Army just moments after the armed groups fled. He was live on CNN while Christiane Armanpour in the studio asked him questions. He showed a workshop full of chemicals which had been occupied by the armed groups.
Amanpour was shocked, and asked him if those chemicals belonged to the Assad army. Pleitgen replied, that the chemicals had been under occupation of the armed groups for years, and had just now been abandoned. Amanpour quickly changed the subject, as that did not fit her narrative.
In May 2013, the UN’s Carla Del Ponte, admitted that the rebels had used chemical weapons.
The transitional government of President Ahmed al-Sharaa has vowed to fight terrorists alongside the US and others. Al-Sharaa has personally changed from a commander of the former Al Qaeda branch in Syria, to a leader interacting with other world leaders and trying to rebuild his broken economy and providing a bright future for the Syrian people.
He has previously said Syria has a good relationship with Russia. Syria and its people are attempting to turn a new page and forget about the past war.