Douma, Syria, 7 April 2018
The Chemical Weapons Deception
It is now six years since the infamous events in Douma, a town on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria, during which 43 civilians are alleged to have been killed when Syrian air force helicopters dropped two chlorine gas canisters on to residential areas. At the time, the Syrian army was on the cusp of securing the area and liberating its population who had been living under the iron fist of the extremist group Jaysh al-Islam. There was no obvious strategic or tactical reason for the Syrian government to have carried out the attack, which simply provide a rationale for the US, France and the UK to carry out military action against Syria seven days later.
Even at the time, there were wide spread doubts that the attack had occurred as alleged. Independent journalists such as Eva Bartlett and
reported from on the ground that there was widespread questioning about what had actually transpired. British journalist Robert Fisk reported doubts in the UK mainstream media outlet The Independent, whilst the Russian Federation presented a series of witnesses to the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical weapons) in The Hague who protested that hospital scenes, associated with the alleged attacks, had been staged. A year later, after reportedly 6 months of research, BBC producer Riam Dalati stated unequivocally that the hospital scenes had been staged.
Tasked with investigating the alleged attack, an OPCW Fact Finding Mission (FFM) published its report just under a year later on the 1st of March 2019. The report concluded that there were ‘reasonable grounds’ a chemical weapons attack had occurred. In other words, the report, to all intents and purposes, placed the blame for the events in Douma on the Syrian government and supported the idea that two Syrian Arab Air Force helicopters had dropped the chlorine gas cylinders which had, in turn, killed the 43 civilians.
However, something had gone seriously wrong with the investigation. Within weeks of the OPCW FFM report being published, persons from within the OPCW leaked an engineering study which stated, unequivocally, that the damage on the two chlorine cylinders was not compatible with their having been dropped from a helicopter.
Later that year, an OPCW official presented evidence to a panel of experts in Brussels, hosted by the Courage Foundation, which detailed how witness testimony questioning the attack had occurred was suppressed, and how chemical analysis had been exaggerated in order to misleadingly suggest that the presence of chlorine gas presence had been confirmed. Most significantly, expert opinion provided by NATO chemical weapons toxicologists, which made clear the 43 deceased were *not* killed by chlorine gas, was erased from the record.
At a critical stage in the investigation, in a remarkable act of subterfuge, someone in the OPCW had substituted the original interim report written by the Douma investigation team, without their knowledge, with a doctored and censored report which made no mention of this critical toxicology finding. The Courage Foundation panel concluded:
‘… key information about chemical analysis, toxicology consultations, ballistics studies, and witness testimonies was suppressed ostensibly to favour a preordained conclusion’.
British Journalist Peter Hitchens reported these revelations in the Mail on Sunday in late October and November 2019.
Ever since OPCW scientists effectively blew the whistle regarding the corrupted OPCW FFM back in 2019, the only response from the OPCW and the British, American and French governments has been to, simultaneously, smear and denigrate those asking questions whilst refusing to respond to any of the issues raised about the Douma investigation. And they have persisted with this strategy of doubling down even when huge amounts of information, much of it documented by
at the Grayzone, has come into the public domain (see also the Wikileaks releases here). This brazen stonewalling has continued through to 2024 when, even after the Brazilian government had questioned the OPCW at the UN Security Council, the response was silence. Brazil’s challenge to the OPCW directly followed the 2023 publication of our Berlin Group 21 50,000 word report detailing the deception and corruption reported by OPCW whistleblowers and officials.
The British, French and American governments, along with a largely co-opted OPCW senior management, are covering up two major issues. The first pertains to the truth of what happened to the civilians at Douma. The second to the veracity of the entire chemical weapons narrative promoted by Western governments during the course of the now 13 year long, Western-backed, dirty war against Syria.
Regarding the former, if the 43 civilians were not killed by chlorine gas, what did kill them? The reality is that we now know that White Helmet responders and Jaysh al-Islam were involved in events surrounding what happened in the Douma apartment block where the 43 dead civilians were found (see OPS-WGSPM report). They filmed the scenes, moved the bodies, and then had them buried in a mass grave. Those same White Helmets then worked closely with former British military officer James le Mesurier, who founded the White Helmets, in order to supply evidence to the OPCW FFM investigation (see page 18 BG21 Report). In unclear circumstances, Le Mesurier fell to his death from the roof of his apartment in Turkey two weeks after the Courage Foundation panel and Peter Hitchen’s Mail on Sunday report referred to earlier. It is also well-established that Jaysh al-Islam were holding several thousand civilians prisoner in underground locations some of whom were never released (see page 22 BG21 Report). All of this evidence points towards a conclusion that, under the noses of le Mesurier and his British government backers, a major war crime was committed for the purposes of staging a supposed chemical weapons attack designed to be blamed on the Syrian government.
This leads us to the second major issue, that of the tenability of the entire Syria chemical weapons narrative. The facts that have emerged from the Douma investigation demonstrate that corruption, deception and even criminality run through the organisations and groups who promote this narrative. If Douma is a lie, then that might well be the case for all of the alleged chemical weapons incidents. Indeed, one does not have to look very far in order to find problems. The first briefing note issued by the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media, of which I am the convenor, detailed multiple problems with the OPCW FFM investigations of earlier alleged attacks.
One of these, occurring a year before Douma in a town called Khan Shaykhoun, included children allegedly killed by sarin nerve agent actually showing head injuries *after* their purported rescue by White Helmets first responders. Most significantly, the one major mass casualty chemical weapons event in Syria was that of the Ghouta 2013 attack in which hundreds of civilians perished. Controversial at the time, in terms of attribution of responsibility, we now know, thanks to a detailed study by Adam Larson, Michel Kobs and Chris Kabusk, that the joint UN-OPCW investigation included a 30 degree measurement error with respect to a rocket trajectory. Some of the evidence is described in this short video:
This error allowed the finger to be pointed at the Syrian government and, to date, the report author has been unable to account for this error (private correspondence between me and the UN-OPCW report author Ake Sellstrom). Moreover, the forensic analysis provided by Larson and co provides definitive evidence that the sarin rockets were launched from opposition-held areas, not government held territory.
All of this evidence points towards the Syria chemical weapons issue being a strategic deception designed to discredit and demonise the Syrian government. Similar to the 2002/3 Iraq WMD deception, this has involved framing an ‘enemy’ with allegations of chemical and biological weapons possession. Unlike the Iraq case, Syria has involved actual usage of chemical weapons in order to stage events that can then be blamed on the Syrian government. The British government, via its proxies in the field, such as James le Mesurier and his White Helmets, have played a central role in this strategic deception, as have the demonstrably corrupted and infiltrated OPCW Fact Finding Missions.
In the final analysis, it is now clear to many people that western governments have built a veritable empire of lies in order to maintain a belligerent stance in the international system. One could go back much further, but the current phase of conflict, now culminating with genocide against the Palestinians coupled with regional conflagrations - witness the fighting/instability in Yemen, Syria, Iran, Lebanon and Ukraine - is underpinned by a litany of deceptions. These include the 9/11 event, the notorious Iraq WMD deception, the chemical weapons propaganda in Syria, as well as Ukraine war related deceptions such as the Nord Stream attack. One can only hope that, as the empire finally crumbles, so too will all of its lies.
Great summary & reminder of this strategic, grand-scale deception and the pattern within which it falls.
War is a Racket and they will not stop until we stand together to say “enough”!
https://www.heritage-history.com/site/hclass/secret_societies/ebooks/pdf/butler_racket.pdf