For the first time in a prolonged cover-up scandal, the world’s top chemical watchdog has acknowledged censoring a finding that undermined allegations of a toxic gas attack by the former Syrian government.
According to previously leaked documents, expert German military toxicologists consulted by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) ruled out chlorine gas as the cause of death of dozens of victims in an alleged chemical attack in the Syrian town of Douma in April 2018.
The experts even raised the possibility that the incident was a false flag. The OPCW suppressed this finding and released a final report asserting that chlorine gas was likely used. The OPCW’s conclusion aligned with the claims of the U.S., U.K. and France, which bombed Syria in April 2018 over what they alleged was a Syrian government chemical attack in Douma.
After years of stonewalling, the OPCW has admitted that the Germans’ input, along with the fact that they were even consulted, was concealed.
The concession came during a legal battle with Dr. Brendan Whelan, a veteran OPCW inspector and senior member of the team that deployed to Syria for the Douma mission. Whelan and another Douma team member, Ian Henderson, raised concerns about the manipulation of the investigation’s findings.
After their complaints became public, the OPCW leadership publicly disparaged the two dissenting inspectors and penalized them for alleged breaches of confidentiality.
Whelan successfully challenged his censure before the Geneva-based Tribunal of the International Labour Organisation (ILOAT), which recently awarded him damages and instructed the OPCW to withdraw its impugned decision.
One of the allegations against Whelan was that he improperly sent two letters in March and April 2019 to Fernando Arias, the OPCW director-general, raising concerns about unethical conduct in the Douma investigation.
In trying to make its case against Whelan, the OPCW inadvertently admitted to the censorship that he had challenged.
In his letters to Arias, the OPCW complained, Whelan included
“specific and detailed information gathered by FFM [Fact-Finding Mission] investigators from toxicology experts. This information, classified as OPCW Highly Protected, was not included in the Final Report which was publicly released.”
The OPCW’s confirmation that it excluded the toxicologists’ “Highly Protected” information from the publicly released Final Report confirms one of Whelan’s key grievances.
“Critical information, like the expert opinions of the toxicologists… has, shockingly, been omitted,” Whelan wrote in his April 2019 letter.
“There is even no record in the report of those consultations… To say that this selective use of expert opinions and facts is disturbing is an understatement.”
Hellbound and Down 