Snuck out in today’s news.
Sarin gas that killed thousands in Damascus is from Assad’s stockpiles
Chemical weapons inspectors have for the first time linked the sarin gas used in an attack in Damascus in 2013 to President Assad’s stockpiles. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) matched “markers” on samples taken from the site of the attack in rebel-held eastern Ghouta with sarin stocks handed over to the UN by Assad’s government in 2014.
The finding supports western and Syrian opposition claims that regime forces carried out the attack in the early hours of August 21, 2013, killing more than a thousand people. Assad has always denied responsibility, claiming that rebels carried out the attack themselves in order to push the West towards military intervention. The OPCW also found links between Assad’s sarin stocks and the chemicals dropped on the town of Khan al-Assal in Aleppo province in March 2013, in what was believed to be the first chemical attack of the war. It had already reported the same link with the attack in the Idlib town of Khan Sheikhoun last April. “It was serious matching and serious laboratory work,” a source at the OPCW told Reuters.
Other experts have confirmed that the matching components in the various samples constituted solid proof that the chemicals used on civilians in the three attacks came from Syrian government stockpiles. “A match of samples from the 2013 Ghouta attacks to tests of chemicals in the Syrian stockpile is the equivalent of DNA evidence: definitive proof,” said Amy Smithson, a US non-proliferation expert.
The findings are, however, unlikely to result in any concrete action being taken against Assad. The joint UN and OPCW inquiry was halted in November after Russia blocked a motion to renew its mandate........