The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), for the first time, on Wednesday, April 8, designated the Syrian regime’s army of Bashar al-Assad as responsible for chemical attacks in the north of the country in 2017.
"The ITI (OPCW Identification and Investigation Team) concluded that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the authors of the use of sarin as a chemical weapon in Latamné on March 24 and 30 2017 and the use of chlorine as a chemical weapon on March 25, 2017 were individuals belonging to the Syrian Arab Air Force ", IIT coordinator Santiago Onate-Laborde said in a statement. This is the first report by the IIT, which is responsible for identifying the suspected perpetrators of chemical attacks in Syria.
According to the OPCW, Syrian Air Force planes and helicopter dropped bombs containing sarin and chlorine in the three attacks, which "Affected" more than 100 people in total.
Another report expected in the coming months
“As the IIT is not a judicial body with the power to assign individual criminal responsibility, it is now up to the Executive Council of the OPCW, the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the international community as a whole to take all other measure they deem appropriate and necessary ", said the OPCW director Fernando Arias, also quoted in the statement.
Another report is expected in the coming months concerning an attack that left 40 people dead in Douma in April 2018 after the use of chlorine, according to OPCW investigators. The Syrian government constantly denies any involvement in chemical attacks, claiming to have released all of its chemical weapons stocks under international supervision after an agreement reached in 2013.
