The following is an excerpt from of the article “OPCW Investigator Testifies at UN That No Chemical Attack Took Place in Douma, Syria” by Ben Borton via TheGrayZone.com:
A former lead investigator from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has spoken out at the United Nations, stating in no uncertain terms that the scientific evidence suggests there was no gas attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018. The dissenter, Ian Henderson, worked for 12 years at the international watchdog organization, serving as an inspection team leader and engineering expert. Among his most consequential jobs was assisting the international body’s fact-finding mission (FFM) on the ground in Douma. He told a UN Security Council session convened on January 20, 2020 by Russia’s delegation that OPCW management had rejected his group’s scientific research, dismissed the team, and produced another report that totally contradicted their initial findings.
“We had serious misgivings that a chemical attack had occurred,” Henderson said, referring to the FFM team in Douma. The former OPCW inspector added that he had compiled evidence through months of research that “provided further support for the view that there had not been a chemical attack.”
Foreign-backed Islamist militants and the Western government-funded regime-change influence operation known as the White Helmets accused the Syrian government of dropping gas cylinders and killing dozens of people in the city of Douma on April 7, 2018. The Syrian government rejected the accusation, claiming the incident was staged by the insurgents. At the time, Douma was controlled by the extremist Salafi-jihadist militia Jaysh al-Islam, which was created and funded by Saudi Arabia and formerly allied with Syria’s powerful al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.
The governments of the United States, Britain, and France responded to the allegations of a chemical attack by launching airstrikes against the Syrian government on April 14. The military assault was illegal under international law, as the countries did not have UN authorization.
In May 2019, an internal OPCW engineering assessment was leaked to the public. The document, authored by Ian Henderson, said the “dimensions, characteristics and appearance of the cylinders” in Douma “were inconsistent with what would have been expected in the case of either cylinder having been delivered from an aircraft,” adding that there is “a higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being delivered from aircraft.”
WikiLeaks has published numerous internal emails from the OPCW that reveal allegations that the body’s management staff doctored the Douma report. As the evidence of internal suppression grew, the OPCW’s first director-general, José Bustani, decided to speak out. “The convincing evidence of irregular behavior in the OPCW investigation of the alleged Douma chemical attack confirms doubts and suspicions I already had,” Bustani stated. “I could make no sense of what I was reading in the international press. Even official reports of investigations seemed incoherent at best. The picture is certainly clearer now, although very disturbing,” the former OPCW head concluded.
WikiLeaks release of OPCW Douma Documents can be found here: https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/
