With the OPCW Having Disproven the Regime’s Allegations About Five Attacks to Date, SNHR Renews its Calls on the OPCW Not to Waste Further Resources and Efforts on Any Allegations by A Regime Whose Deadly Use of Chemical Weapons is Well Established
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On Tuesday, June 11, 2024, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ (OPCW) Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) released its report summarizing the findings of an investigation into two alleged attacks reported by the Syrian regime’s government to the OPCW’s Technical Secretariat, which requested that they be investigated. The regime’s allegations are outlined below:
– On September 21, 2017, the Syrian regime’s government reported that ISIS had carried out an attack involving the use of munitions carrying unidentified toxic gases on August 9, 2017, near Qalib al-Thawr village east of al-Salamiya city in rural Hama. The regime claimed that, as a result of the attack, a number of regime soldiers exhibited symptoms such as suffocation and loss of consciousness.
– On November 24, 2017, the Syrian regime reported that an attack involving the use of mortar shells containing toxic gases had been carried out a few weeks earlier on November 8, 2017, targeting a regime army location in al-Bulbul area in the vicinity of Souran city in Hama governorate.
In this latest report, the FFM, whose mandate includes responsibility for determining whether or not toxic chemicals have been used as a weapon of war in Syria but not assigning culpability in any alleged attacks involving their use, summarized the findings of their investigations into the alleged two attacks. The FFM noted that as part of their investigations, the investigators had conducted field visits to sites related to the alleged incidents reported by the regime, and interviewed supposed eyewitnesses and victims, as well as reviewing and analyzing photos, video footage, and documents provided by the Syrian regime’s government, as well as reviewing open-source materials.