International investigators have said for the first time that they suspect President Bashar Assad and his brother are responsible for the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict, according to a document seen by Reuters.
A joint inquiry for the United Nations and global watchdog the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had previously identified only military units and did not name any commanders or officials.
Now a list has been produced of individuals whom the investigators have linked to a series of chlorine bomb attacks in 2014-15 — including Assad, his younger brother Maher and other high-ranking figures — indicating the decision to use toxic weapons came from the very top, according to a source familiar with the inquiry.
The Assads could not be reached for comment but a Syrian government official said accusations that government forces had used chemical weapons had “no basis in truth.” The government has repeatedly denied using such weapons during the civil war, which is almost six years old, saying all the attacks highlighted by the inquiry were the work of rebels or the Islamic State militant group.
The list, which has been seen by Reuters but has not been made public, was based on a combination of evidence compiled by the UN-OPCW team in Syria and information from Western and regional intelligence agencies, according to the source, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Reuters was unable to independently review the evidence or to verify it.
The UN-OPCW inquiry — known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism — is led by a panel of three independent experts, supported by a team of technical and administrative staff. It is mandated by the UN Security Council to identify individuals and organizations responsible for chemical attacks in Syria.
Virginia Gamba, the head of the Joint Investigative Mechanism, denied any list of individual suspects had yet been compiled by the inquiry.
“There are no ... identification of individuals being considered at this time,” she told Reuters by e-mail.
The use of chemical weapons is banned under international law and could constitute a war crime.
While the inquiry has no judicial powers, any naming of suspects could lead to their prosecution. Syria is not a member of the International Criminal Court, but alleged war crimes could be referred to the court by the Security Council — although splits among global powers over the war make this a distant prospect at present.
The list could form the basis for the inquiry team’s investigations this year, according to the source. It is unclear whether the United Nations or OPCW will publish the list separately.
‘Highest levels’
The list identifies 15 people “to be scrutinized in relation to use of CW (chemical weapons) by Syrian Arab Republic Armed Forces in 2014 and 2015.” It does not specify what role they are suspected of playing, but lists their titles.
It is split into three sections. The first, titled “Inner Circle President” lists six people including Assad, his brother who commands the elite 4th Armored Division, the defense minister and the head of military intelligence.
The second section names the air force chief as well as four commanders of air force divisions. They include the heads of the 22nd Air Force Division and the 63rd Helicopter Brigade, units that the inquiry has previously said dropped chlorine bombs.
The third part of the list — “Other relevant Senior Mil Personnel” — names two colonels and two major-generals.
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, an independent specialist in biological and chemical weapons who monitors Syria, told Reuters the list reflected the military chain of command.
“The decisions would be made at the highest levels initially and then delegated down. Hence the first use would need to be authorized by Assad,” said de Bretton-Gordon, a former commander of British and NATO chemical and biological defense divisions who frequently visits Syria for professional consultancy work.
The Syrian defense ministry and air force could not be reached for comment.
Chlorine barrel bombs
Syria joined the international Chemical Weapons Convention under a US-Russian deal that followed the deaths of hundreds of civilians in a sarin gas attack in Ghouta on the outskirts of Damascus in August 2013.
It was the deadliest use of chemicals in global warfare since the 1988 Halabja massacre at the end of the Iran-Iraq war, which killed at least 5,000 people in Iraqi Kurdistan.
The Syrian government, which denied its forces were behind the Ghouta attack, also agreed to hand over its declared stockpile of 1,300 tons of toxic weaponry and dismantle its chemical weapons program under international supervision.
The United Nations and OPCW have been investigating whether Damascus is adhering to its commitments under the agreement, which averted the threat of US-led military intervention.
The bodies appointed the panel of experts to conduct the inquiry, and its mandate runs until November. The panel published a report in October last year which said Syrian government forces used chemical weapons at least three times in 2014-2015 and that Islamic State used mustard gas in 2015.
The October report identified Syria’s 22nd Air Force Division and 63rd Helicopter Brigade as having dropped chlorine bombs and said people “with effective control in the military units ... must be held accountable.”
The source familiar with the inquiry said the October report had clearly established the institutions responsible and that the next step was to go after the individuals.
Washington on Thursday blacklisted 18 senior Syrian officials based on the UN-OPCW inquiry’s October report — some of whom also appear on the list seen by Reuters — but not Assad or his brother.
The issue of chemical weapons use in Syria has become a deeply political one, and the UN-OPCW inquiry’s allegations of chlorine bomb attacks by government forces have split the UN Security Council’s veto-wielding members.
The United States, Britain and France have called for sanctions against Syria, while Assad’s ally Russia has said the evidence presented is insufficient to justify such measures.
A Security Council resolution would be required to bring Assad and other senior Syrian officials before the International Criminal Court for any possible war crimes prosecution — something Russia would likely block.
Assad linked to Syrian chemical attacks for first time
Assad linked to Syrian chemical attacks for first time
A lion cub evacuated from Lebanon to a South African sanctuary escapes airstrikes and abuse
Sara is the fifth lion cub to be evacuated from Lebanon by local rescue group Animals Lebanon since Hezbollah and Israel began exchanging fire
BEIRUT: When Sara first arrived at her rescuers’ home, she was sick, tired, and was covered in ringworms and signs of abuse all over her little furry body.
After spending two months in a small Beirut apartment with an animal rights group, the four-and-half-month-old lion cub arrived Friday at a wildlife sanctuary in South Africa after a long journey on a yacht and planes, escaping both Israeli airstrikes and abusive owners.
Sara is the fifth lion cub to be evacuated from Lebanon by local rescue group Animals Lebanon since Hezbollah and Israel began exchanging fire a day after the Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel by Hamas that ignited the war in Gaza last year.
Animals Lebanon first discovered Sara on social media channels in July. Her owner, a Lebanese man in the ancient city of Baalbek, posted bombastic videos of himself parading with the little lion cub on TikTok and Instagram.
Under Lebanese law, it is prohibited to own wild and exotic animals.
The lion cub was “really just being used as showing off,” said Jason Mier, executive director of Animals Lebanon.
In mid-September, the group finally retrieved her after filing a case with the police and judiciary, who interrogated her owner and forced him to give up the feline.
Soon after that, Israel launched an offensive against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah — after nearly a year of low-level conflict — and Baalbek came under heavy bombardment.
Mier and his team were able to extract Sara from Baalbek weeks before Israel launched its aerial bombardment campaign on the ancient city, and move her to an apartment in Beirut’s busy commercial Hamra district.
She was supposed to fly to South Africa in October, but international airlines stopped flights to Lebanon as Israeli jets and drones hit sites close to the country’s only airport.
Hezbollah began firing rockets across the border into Israel in support of its ally, Hamas, on Oct. 8, 2023, a day after Palestinian militants staged the deadly surprise incursion into southern Israel. Israel responded with shelling and airstrikes. Beginning in mid-September, Israel launched an intense aerial bombardment of much of Lebanon, followed by a ground invasion.
Before the conflict, Animals Lebanon was active in halting animal trafficking and the exotic pet trade, saving over two dozen big cats from imprisonment in lavish homes and sending them to wildlife sanctuaries.
Since the war started, Animals Lebanon has also been rescuing pets that have been trapped in damaged apartments as hundreds of thousands of Lebanese fled bombardment — almost 1,000 over the past month alone.
“Lots are still in our care because the owners of these animals are still displaced,” Mier said. “So, we can’t expect the person to take this animal back when he might be living on the street or in a school.”
Before the conflict escalated, the rights group was able to move around the country more freely as the fighting largely remained in southern Lebanon along the border with Israel. But things became more difficult as airstrikes became more frequent and spread over wider swathes of the country.
Unaware of the war around her, Sara thrived. She was fed a platter of raw meat daily and grew to 40 kilograms (88 pounds). She cuddled every morning with Mier’s wife Maggie, also an animal rights activist.
But the activists faced a major obstacle: How would they get her out of Lebanon?
Animals Lebanon collected donations from supporters and rights groups around the world to put Sara on a small yacht to take her to Cyprus. From there, she flew to the United Arab Emirates before her long journey ended in Cape Town.
Days before her evacuation Sara played in one of the bedrooms at Mier’s apartment, with cushions and chew toys scattered.
Thursday at dawn, she arrived to the port of Dbayeh, just north of Beirut. Mier and his team were relieved, but also struggling to hold back their tears at her departure.
Mier anticipates Sara will be held for monitoring and disease-control, but soon will be part of a community of other lions.
“Then she’ll be integrated with two recent lions that we’ve sent from Lebanon, so she’ll make a nice group of three hopefully,” he said. “That’s where she will live out the rest of her life. That is the best option for her.”
Palestinian militants release new clip of Israeli hostage Trupanov in Gaza
- Trupanov appealed to Aryeh Deri, a member of Israel’s governing coalition, to help free him and the other hostages held in Gaza
- In September, Deri described the act of bringing back the hostages as a “sacred duty“
JERUSALEM: A Palestinian militant group allied with Hamas released a new clip Friday of Israeli hostage Sasha Trupanov, held in Gaza since the October 2023 attack, after publishing a first video earlier this week.
Trupanov, identified by his relatives in the previous video released on Wednesday, appealed to Aryeh Deri — leader of the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party Shas, a member of Israel’s governing coalition — to help free him and the other hostages held in Gaza.
The Shas party supports a deal for their release under the Jewish religious obligation to do everything possible to free captives.
In September, Deri described the act of bringing back the hostages as a “sacred duty.”
Trupanov, 29, is a dual Russian-Israeli citizen who was abducted with his girlfriend, Sapir Cohen, from the Nir Oz kibbutz near the Gaza border.
His mother and grandmother were also abducted and released along with Cohen during a week-long truce and hostage-prisoner exchange in November 2023.
His father, Vitaly, was killed in the October 7, 2023 attack, the deadliest in Israeli history.
This is now the fourth video of Trupanov released by Islamic Jihad.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called for the release of Trupanov and another hostage, Maxim Herkin, in comments made before the release of the latest clip.
“We reiterate our call for the immediate and unconditional release of all civilians held by Palestinian groups, with priority given to our compatriots,” she said.
Herkin, a 35-year-old Russian-Israeli citizen, was abducted at the Nova music festival.
Militants seized 251 hostages during the attack, some of them already dead.
Ninety-seven are still being held hostage, while 34 are confirmed dead but their bodies remain in Gaza.
The attack resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed 43,764 people in Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.
Workers search through rubble in eastern Lebanon where Israeli strike killed 13
- All those killed in the strike on the town of Douris near Baalbek were employees and volunteers of the emergency services agency, according to the Lebanese Civil Defense
- Some other remains were also recovered and will require DNA testing
BEIRUT: Rescue teams were searching Friday through rubble for missing people near the city of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon where an Israeli strike hit a civil defense center the night before, killing at least 13.
All those killed in the strike on the town of Douris near Baalbek were employees and volunteers of the emergency services agency, according to the Lebanese Civil Defense. Some other remains were also recovered and will require DNA testing, it said in a statement.
The General Directorate of Civil Defense expressed “deep regret over this direct attack on its members.” Staffers “will continue to respond to relief calls and continue with its humanitarian mission, no matter how great the challenges and sacrifices are,” it said.
Israel has accused Hezbollah of using ambulances and medical facilities to transport and store weapons. The Israeli military has not commented on the strike on the civil defense center in Baalbek.
Israel has been striking deeper inside Lebanon since September as it escalates the war against Hezbollah. After 13 months of war, more than 3,300 people have been killed and more than 14,400 wounded, Lebanon’s Health Ministry says.
The Israel-Hamas war began after Palestinian militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting 250 others. Lebanon’s Hezbollah group began firing into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza.
Israel’s blistering 13-month war in Gaza has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to local health officials who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. The fighting has left some 76 people dead in Israel, including 31 soldiers.
Gaza aid access ‘at a low point’, UN official says
- UN official’s remarks run counter to a US assessment earlier this week that Israel is not currently impeding humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip
GENEVA: Aid access in Gaza is at a low point with deliveries to parts of the besieged north of the enclave all but impossible, a UN humanitarian official said on Friday.
The remarks run counter to a US assessment earlier this week that Israel is not currently impeding humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip, avoiding restrictions on US military aid. Israel has said it has worked hard to assist the humanitarian needs in Gaza.
“From our perspective, on all indicators you can possibly think of in a humanitarian response, all of them are going in the wrong direction,” said Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in response to a question at a Geneva press briefing about whether humanitarian access had improved.
“Access is at a low point. Chaos, suffering, despair, death, destruction, displacement are at a high point,” he added.
Laerke voiced concern about north Gaza where residents have been ordered to head south as Israeli forces’ more than month-long incursion continues. Israel says its operations there are designed to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping.
“We have seen and been particularly concerned about the situation in the north of Gaza, which is now effectively under siege and it is near impossible to deliver aid in there. So the operation is being stifled,” Laerke said.
“One of my colleagues described it as, for humanitarian work... you want to jump. You want to jump up and do something. But what he added was: but our legs are broken. So we are being asked to jump while our legs are broken.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in an Oct. 13 letter gave their Israeli counterparts a list of specific steps that Israel needed to do within 30 days to address the worsening situation in Gaza.
Failure to do so may have possible consequences on US military aid to Israel, they said in the letter. Other non-UN aid groups say Israel has failed to meet the demands — an allegation Israel has rejected.
Hamas ready for ceasefire ‘immediately’ but Israel yet to offer ‘serious’ proposal
- Hamas official Basem Naim: Oct. 7 attack ‘an act of self defense’
- ‘I have the right to live a free and dignified life,’ he tells Sky News
LONDON: A Hamas official has claimed that Israel has not put forward any “serious proposals” for a ceasefire since the assassination of its leader Ismail Haniyeh, despite the group being ready for one “immediately.”
Dr. Basem Naim told the Sky News show “The World With Yalda Hakim” that the last “well-defined, brokered deal” was put on the table between the two warring sides on July 2.
“It was discussed in all details and I think we were near to a ceasefire ... which can end this war, offer a permanent ceasefire and total withdrawal and prisoner exchange,” he said. “Unfortunately (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu preferred to go the other way.”
Naim urged the incoming Trump administration to do whatever necessary to help end the war.
He said Hamas does not regret its attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which left 1,200 people dead and prompted Israel’s invasion of Gaza that has killed in excess of 43,000 people and left hundreds of thousands injured.
Naim said Israel is guilty of “big massacres” in the Palestinian enclave, and when asked if Hamas bore responsibility as a result of the Oct. 7 attack, he called it “an act of self defense,” adding: “It’s exactly as if you’re accusing the victims for the crimes of the aggressor.”
He continued: “I’m a member of Hamas, but at the same time I’m an innocent Palestinian civilian because I have the right to live a free and dignified life and I have the right to defend myself, to defend my family.”
When asked if he regrets the Oct. 7 attack, Naim replied: “Do you believe that a prisoner who is knocking (on) the door or who is trying to get out of the prison, he has to regret his will to be? This is part of our dignity ... to defend ourselves, to defend our children.”
