The UN chemical weapons watchdog has been ordered to pay moral and legal compensation to one of its former investigators who challenged the organization’s claim that the Syrian government carried out a chemical attack against its own civilians during the 14-year war.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) investigated the alleged chemical attack, which killed 43 civilians in the city of Douma in the Damascus countryside in April 2018.
The OPCW’s final report on the incident was released in March of 2019 and claimed it was reasonable to believe that the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad had carried out the attack.
However, Brendan Whelan, who was responsible for the scientific planning and coordination of the OPCW mission that traveled to Syria to investigate the attack and was the chief author of the team’s investigation report, challenged the conclusion of the OPCW final report before it was released.
He asserted that evidence produced by the mission countering the report’s conclusion of Syrian government responsibility had been omitted by the OPCW senior leadership.
According to the final OPCW report, the Syrian government dropped two yellow cylinders filled with chlorine on two separate buildings in Douma. One cylinder partially penetrated the reinforced concrete roof, while another penetrated the roof of the other building, implausibly bounced off a wall, and landed softly on a bed. After the cylinders were dropped, the chlorine gas was...
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