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World news30 January 2023

Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) releases third report of the Investigation and Identification Team

Field: Chemical Tiếng Việt

Unofficial translation from the Vietnamese original.

Reasonable grounds to identify the Syrian Arab Air Force as the perpetrator of the 2018 Douma chemical attack

27/01/2023

The Hague, the Netherlands - 27 January 2023. The third report of the OPCW Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the Syrian Arab Air Force was the perpetrator of the chemical weapons attack of 7 April 2018 in Douma, the Syrian Arab Republic.  

Based on an overall assessment of the large volume and variety of evidence gathered and analysed, and on the convergence of the results of many such corroborated analyses, the IIT concluded that, on the evening of 7 April 2018, at least one helicopter of the Syrian elite “Tiger Forces” unit dropped two yellow cylinders containing toxic chlorine gas onto two residential buildings in an inhabited area of Douma, killing 43 named individuals and affecting dozens of others.   

Equipment used in the chemical weapons attack

“The use of chemical weapons in Douma – and anywhere – is unacceptable and a breach of international law,” said the OPCW Director-General, Ambassador Fernando Arias. 

“The Chemical Weapons Convention was signed 30 years ago – it embodies the legally binding commitment of 193 States Parties to the complete prohibition of chemical weapons. The OPCW Technical Secretariat was mandated by the Conference of the States Parties in June 2018 to identify the perpetrators of the use of chemical weapons in Syria. This report fulfils that mandate.”  

The IIT assessed physical evidence collected and provided by OPCW experts, States Parties and other entities. This included 70 environmental and biomedical samples, 66 witness statements and other verified data, such as forensic analyses, satellite imagery, gas dispersion modelling and trajectory simulations. The evidence was carefully reviewed by IIT investigators and analysts and by a number of independent external experts.  

The IIT considered a range of possible scenarios and tested their validity against the evidence it had collected and analysed in order to reach its conclusion: that the Syrian Arab Air Force was the perpetrator of this attack. 

The conclusions of the report are reached on the basis of “reasonable grounds”, the standard of proof consistently applied by international fact-finding bodies and commissions of inquiry. The IIT conducted its investigation from January 2021 to December 2022.  

Director-General Arias added: “The world now knows the facts – it is up to the international community to take action, at the OPCW and beyond.” 

Van Thuan - Centre 81

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