Syria says arrested Assad-era officer specialising in chemical weapons
People sit across from a poster depicting Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in a gas mask during an event in the rebel-held northern city of Afrin, on Aug 20, 2023, marking the 10-year anniversary of chemical attacks that killed over 1,400 people in Ghouta, near the capital. (Photo: AFP/Rami al Sayed)
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DAMASCUS: Syrian authorities announced on Wednesday (Jul 15) the arrest of a former officer they say was a chemical weapons specialist in charge of sarin gas depots and chemical weapons manufacturing during ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s era.
Since Assad’s fall in December 2024, authorities have arrested dozens of people they say committed crimes during the country’s 13-year civil war, and started trials in April.
The interior ministry said security forces had arrested colonel Ahmed Habib Ali, calling him “a chemical weapons expert”.
It also said he “was responsible for sarin gas storage facilities and chemical manufacturing within Unit 417”, a key chemical weapons storage facility near the capital, Damascus.
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According to the ministry, Ali was “one of the officers who supervised the manufacture of about 20 bombs loaded with sarin gas, each weighing 250kg, which were used in attacks targeting Syrian cities and towns in 2013 and 2017”.
In the first and deadliest instance in August 2013, the army was accused of using chemical weapons to target areas then under rebel control, killing more than 1,400 men, women and children, according to US intelligence and rights groups.
With Syria at the height of its civil war, the Assad government agreed to hand over its chemical arsenal in order to avert US strikes.
Between 2014 and 2017, Damascus was accused of launching four further attacks on towns controlled by opposition factions, using sarin and chlorine gas.
Ali’s arrest comes after Syria was reinstated into the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) last week.
The OPCW had stripped Syria of its voting rights in 2021 after finding its air force had used sarin and chlorine gas on its own people.
In April, Syria’s judiciary began a series of public trials for former officials on various charges, some of which amount to war crimes committed after the outbreak of popular protests in 2011, which were violently suppressed by the authorities.
Source: AFP/ec
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