A man suspected of supplying equipment to the Syrian army – including components that could be used in the manufacture of chemical weapons – has been arrested in the south of France after arriving there for a holiday, French media reported on Sunday.
The man has not been officially named but he...
Blog archive: Syria
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27th December 2021
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23rd December 2021The Research Handbook on Political Propaganda is a new book described by its publishers as "a crucial resource for both scholars and students". Optimistically priced at £195 ($258), it has 29 chapters by different authors presenting academic studies of propaganda in a variety of countries....
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14th December 2021A report in the Washington Post yesterday appears to confirm Syrian claims that Israel bombed chemical weapons facilities in the country last June – thus destroying evidence sought by OPCW investigators. Although the paper's story is based on unnamed intelligence sources, information from...
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29th October 2021Syria falls silent over claim that Israel destroyed evidence in Douma chemical weapons investigationSyria's Assad regime is resisting calls to substantiate its claim that Israel has destroyed evidence relating to an alleged chlorine attack on Douma in 2018. According to the regime, two gas cylinders at the centre of the Douma investigation were among the "losses"...
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28th September 2021In April last year a report by the OPCW, the international chemical weapons watchdog, blamed the Assad regime for two sarin attacks on Ltamenah in northern Syria. The implications of this were especially serious because the attacks took place in 2017 – four years after the regime had formally...
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17th September 2021Hundreds of people died – many of them in their sleep – when rockets laden with the nerve agent sarin hit Ghouta, a rebel-held area on the outskirts of Damascus, in the early hours of 21 August 2013. It was the deadliest chemical attack anywhere in the world since the 1980s and it caused...
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26th July 2021Syria's claim that crucial evidence relating to chemical weapons was destroyed by Israeli airstrikes has been greeted with widespread scepticism: it sounds too convenient to be true. In a diplomatic note to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Syria announced that...
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24th July 2021Two gas cylinders that formed crucial evidence in connection with a suspected chemical attack in Syria have been destroyed by an Israeli airstrike, according to the Syrian authorities. The cylinders were at the centre of an investigation by the OPCW’s Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) regarding...
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6th July 2021Four tonnes of a chemical supplied by a German firm and supposedly intended for making pharmaceuticals vanished after arriving in Syria, according to a Swiss newspaper investigation. The chemical – isopropanol – has multiple civilian uses but also is a crucial ingredient in the nerve agent...
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3rd July 2021The Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism is named in memory of a Lebanese-American journalist who died in a car crash while working for Iran's Press TV in 2014. The purpose of the award, according to its website, is to honour non-mainstream journalists who "tell...
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1st April 2021A newly-formed group has joined the campaign to discredit investigations of chemical weapons in Syria and has recruited a former high-ranking UN official to its cause. "Berlin Group 21", whose website was registered on 10 March, is promoting a "statement of concern" which accuses the...
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29th March 2021It emerged last week that a university professor who spreads conspiracy theories about chemical weapons in Syria has been passing information to someone who he mistakenly believed was working for Russian intelligence. In a lengthy email correspondence with the supposed Russian agent, Prof...
