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Senior MP: Western States Assisting Tahrir Al-Sham in Idlib to Use Chemical Weapons

A senior member of the Syrian parliament's Security Committee warned of false-flag chemical attacks by Tahrir al-Sham al-Hay'at (the Levant Liberation Board or the Al-Nusra Front) in Northern Syria to put the blame on the Syrian army, revealing that the western states are helping the terrorist group to this end.

Mohannad al-Haj told the Arabic-language website of Sputnik news agency that given the heavy defeat of Tahrir al-Sham in the battle ground against the Syrian army in the Northern parts of the country, Tahrir al-Sham seems to be readying to conduct false-flag operations in Idlib province.

He added that western states, including Norway and France, have sent experts to train Tahrir al-Sham to use chemical weapons, saying that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has not responded positively to Russia’s demand to investigate chemical attacks by terrorists in al-Saqilbiyeh and Aleppo which shows international collaboration with Tahrir al-Sham, specially by the US and Turkey.

Al-Haj referred to the presence of thousands of foreign terrorists in Idlib province, saying that the western states and Turkey are attempting to keep Idlib as a center for terrorists by stopping the Syrian army’s military operations and supporting Tahrir al-Sham.

He added that given the daily demands of a large number of Idlib residents to liberate the region and fierce insecurities by the terrorists, liberation of this region is necessary.

A leaked report by OPCW engineers contradicted the chemical watchdog’s official report on the April 2018 incident in Syria, and raises questions about political pressure by US, UK and France on the UN body.

In April 2018, as the Syrian government forces recaptured the city of Douma from militants, the “White Helmets” claimed a chemical attack with chlorine and sarin gas killed over 40 people. Not waiting for UN investigators to reach the site, the US, UK and France launched airstrikes against government positions and declared President Bashar Assad was to blame.

In its final report on the incident, published in March 2019, the fact-finding mission of the OPCW found no sarin, but said the cylinders with “molecular chlorine” were dropped from the air. The report cited unnamed, unspecified external “experts”. But there was another report, by OPCW engineers, that challenged these conclusions – and was never included in the final document.

This report was leaked last week to the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media, a group of independent scholars and researchers that have been highly skeptical of official narratives about the Syrian conflict, pushed by militants and the governments that support them. 

“We have confirmation from multiple sources that it is authentic,” Dr. Piers Robinson from the Working Group told RT.

The most important finding of the leaked engineering report is that the gas cylinders used in the attack were more likely to have been placed by hand, implicating the militants, and not the Syrian government – and unraveling the official narrative.

“In summary, observations at the scene of the two locations, together with subsequent analysis, suggest that there is a higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being delivered from an aircraft,” he added.

Robinson states that the OPCW is not denying the document’s authenticity either, only trying to break the link between it and the final report by the fact-finding mission. That, however, raises more questions than it answers.

“The OPCW FFM final report was not signed off. No one’s name was put to it. That is very unusual for OPCW final reports,” Robinson told RT, pointing out that instead of the internal engineering report, it included expertise by “obscure, unnamed, anonymous organizations”, leaving questions about who exactly is behind the watchdog’s conclusions.

Robinson stated that he would like to know “what kind of political pressure might have been brought to bear on the OCPW” by Paris, London and Washington to suppress an internal engineering report in favor of one produced by unspecified outsiders.

If the OPCW, a major UN watchdog, submitted to this kind of pressure, this would be “an incredibly serious matter” on top of the actual atrocity in Douma, which still needs to be fully investigated, he said.

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