Damascus: Former chemical weapons officer arrested

Syrian authorities announced yesterday the arrest of a former officer specializing in chemical weapons and in charge of sarin gas warehouses near Damascus, as part of a wave of arrests launched by Damascus since the overthrow of the regime of ousted President Bashar al-Assad.

The Ministry of Interior stated in a press release that it had carried out a “landmark security operation,” during which it “arrested Colonel Ahmad Habib Ali, who specialized in chemical weapons.” It said he “held the position of head of the Center for Scientific Studies and Research and was responsible for sarin gas warehouses and chemical production at Unit 417, which was one of the main units for storing and preserving chemical weapons near Damascus.”

According to the ministry, the detainee is “one of the officers who supervised the production of approximately twenty bombs loaded with sarin gas, each weighing 250 kilograms, which were used in attacks targeting Syrian cities and towns during 2013 and 2017.”

During that period, several areas were subjected to chemical weapons attacks, the largest of which occurred on August 21, 2013, in Eastern Ghouta and Moadamiyat al-Sham near Damascus, where sarin gas was used. The attack killed 1,429 people, according to Washington and human rights organizations. Following the attack, the ousted regime joined the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and agreed to disclose its stockpile of toxic substances and hand them over for destruction, under pressure from its backers Russia and the United States, which had threatened to launch air strikes.

Between 2014 and 2017, a United Nations and OPCW joint investigation commission accused Assad’s forces of launching four attacks on towns under the control of opposition factions in Idlib province, using sarin and chlorine gas.