Syrian doctors to show the US evidence of Assad’s use of chemical weapons

Testimony before US Congress will be accompanied by dossier documenting 31 chlorine attacks between March and June

A network of Syrian doctors is due to tell the US Congress that Bashar al-Assad’s regime is systematically weaponising chlorine to spread fear among civilian populations, in defiance of a recent UN security council resolution.

The testimony on Wednesday will be accompanied by a dossier of evidence compiled by the Syrian American Medical Society (Sams), a charity that runs 95 medical facilities inside the country. It documents 31 separate chlorine attacks between 16 March and 9 June. The charity says all the attacks were conducted by launching barrel bombs from helicopters and many targeted civilian areas, leaving 10 dead and at least 530 people seeking medical treatment.


Children receiving treatment from a suspected chlorine attack in Al Kastan, Syria, 7 June.

The dossier, which has been seen by the Guardian, provides US lawmakers with data, photos and videos that Sams says were taken in the aftermath of chlorine bombings in a province of Syria recently overrun by militants, including the al-Qaida-affiliated al-Nusra Front.

The Guardian has been unable to verify the material, which includes videos and photos of adults and children struggling to breathe, often wearing oxygen masks. Some are retching, while others are being stripped and hosed down to remove chemical residue.

Sams also provided the Guardian with a redacted list of basic patient information for 221 people treated for chlorine exposure. According to that list, 57 were under 18.



The lead medical coordinator for Sams in Idlib province, Dr Mohamed Tennari, has flown to Washington DC and has been invited to testify in front of the House foreign affairs committee on Wednesday morning. Tennari will say that although chlorine is less likely to kill than conventional weapons, it has created a “new type of psychological torture” for the Syrian people. He told the Guardian: “We would like to see a no-fly zone and increasing help being provided to refugees.”

The Sams data only reflects attacks that have been confirmed by the charity’s own facilities, and only those taking place in Idlib province. Other activists, including the White Helmets, a volunteer rescue service who will also testify at the hearing, have reported further incidents in the adjoining Hama province.

Recent reports suggest that militant forces in Syria, including Isis, are developing a chemical weapons capability of their own. Isis are understood to have used chlorine in Iraq. However, Sams said that all the attacks in their data were launched from helicopters, which are only operated by the Assad regime.

The Syrian president has denied that his forces have deployed chlorine. Although the chemical is widely available, its weaponisation is strictly banned under international law. In an interview with France 2 on 20 April, Assad said there was no proof of chlorine use in attacks on Idlib city.

“This is another fake narrative by the western governments … The regular armaments that we have are more influential than chlorine, so we don’t need it anyway,” he said. “We didn’t use it. We don’t need to use it. We have our regular armaments, and we could achieve our goals without it. So, we don’t use it. No, there’s no proof.”

Tennari, who set up a field hospital in Sarmin four years ago, will tell US lawmakers that the vast majority of chlorine attacks identified by Sams occur at night. The barrels do not explode. Instead the vapour seeps silently into houses and sinks down into basements where residents are likely to be sheltering from conventional explosives. There the toxic gas can choke its victims as it reacts inside the lungs to produce liquid hydrochloric acid.

Tennari told the Guardian that chlorine attacks were being used by the Assad regime to push people out of areas it no longer controlled. “This is a form of collective punishment by the government,” he is expected to tell US lawmakers.

More at:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/16/syria-assad-regime-is-weaponising-chlorine-us-congress-to-hear

Syrian civilians are between a rock and a hard place, Assad on one side, IS on the other, there are no good guys, (well there are rebels who are simply fighting Assad, but how the hell do you tell who they are) there is nowhere for them to go.

Now there are a people who can legitimately say they are persecuted, from every side possible.