War /
Wikileaks Exposes Phony Claims About Douma
Systematic misleading information and doctoring of documents relating to what was supposed to be evidence of a chemical attack that never took place in Douma, east of the Syrian capital Damascus in 2018, have revealed a chain of scandalous practices and malpractice at the highest levels. The fact that this wrongdoing occurred at the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)—the organization supposed to protect civilians not to have them killed over false claims, rigged documents and fabricated evidence—is all the more shocking and outrageous.
Leaked Documents Reveal OPCW Lies
Batches of leaked internal documents from the OPCW published by Wikileaks this past Friday further exposed the fraudulent nature of an official report on an alleged 2018 chemical weapons attack in Douma—then held by CIA-backed Islamist terrorist factions—revealing the report as having been altered and rigged in order to justify an attack by the United States, Britain and France against the Assad-led Syrian government.
Wikileaks latest round of documents included an email from the Chief of Cabinet at the OPCW, Sebastien Braha, sent on February 28, 2019, just ahead of the release of the final report on the investigation of the Douma incident, demanding deletion of dissenting engineering assessment on the attack. The e-mail also demands the removal of any trace of the report produced by veteran OPCW inspector and ballistics expert Ian Henderson from the organization’s internal registry because it dissents from the view that the Assad government was responsible for a chemical attack at Douma.
“Please get this document out of DRA (Documents Registry Archive). And please remove all traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever in DRA,” the internal e-mail from Braha reads.
The Western Narrative
“Systematic efforts to suppress evidence uncovered by investigators that cast significant doubt on the official line pushed by US hawkish war mongers and their allies that the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had conclusively carried out a chemical weapons attack which killed as many as 49 people”, the released documents conclude.
Outrage both within Syria itself and on a much larger scale has followed the revelation that the leadership of the chemical weapons watchdog tried hard to remove the paper trail of a nonconformist report from Douma, which pointed to a possible false flag operation there. The Syrian governments denial of the US-led accusations pertaining to the “incident” in 2018 fell on deaf ears; it is now clear why.
Why Ian Henderson’s Input On Douma Was Scrapped
The document in question is a technical assessment written by OPCW inspector Ian Henderson following a fact-finding mission to Douma, east of Damascus, in the wake of the alleged chlorine gas attack. Western politicians and media insisted at the time that Assad government forces had dropped two gas cylinders as part of an offensive against jihadists in the eastern Ghouta region, killing scores of civilians.
Henderson, however, maintained that evidence on the ground contradicted the airdropping scenario, and that the cylinders may have actually been placed by hand. Considering that the area was under the control of anti-government forces, the memo gives credence to the theory that the terrorists themselves had staged the scene in order to provide a casus belli (justification of war) for US and Western intervention and the subsequent air and missile strikes against Assad’s forces in Syria.
Adding Insult To OPCW’s Shameful Injury
Another document published Friday relates to a meeting with many toxicology experts and their opinions on whether symptoms shown and reported in alleged victims of the attack were consistent with a chlorine gas poisoning. “The experts were conclusive in their statements that there was ‘no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure,'” the document said. Moreover, the chief toxicology expert at the meeting actually suggested that the event could have been “a propaganda exercise.”
The OPCW leadership stands accused of suppressing and withholding opinions contravening the Western-favored narrative, doctoring documents, deliberately adopting misleading language to report what the inspectors had found on the ground in Douma, and contributing to an unjustifiable act of aggression on Syria that resulted in the killing of scores of civilians and caused massive destruction to the infrastructure as well as research facilities near Damascus and elsewhere in the country.
The OPCW’s Deceit In Douma Has Been Exposed
Despite the fact that OPCW’s final report all but confirmed that Damascus was behind the “attack” that never was, the past months and weeks have seen an increasing number of leaked documents and whistleblower testimonies pointing to a possible fabrication. What lends even more credence to the leaks, including the famous Braha email, is that the organization never said any of the previously leaked documents were not real.
Needless to say, such OPCW rigged documents and fabricated allegations were so serious that—in addition to causing the death of dozens of innocent Syrian civilians—they could have easily triggered a regional or, even much worse, a widespread military confrontation between super powers that would have had immeasurable catastrophic consequences for humanity at large. For OPCW to retain any credibility and trustworthiness in the future all participants in this criminally-misleading endeavor should be made accountable and openly prosecuted, along with providing due compensation to Syria and the families of those killed in the US, French and British aggression as a result of the OPCW’s high-level corruption and foul play.
