DISINFO: West has used OPCW to throw groundless accusation against Syria
SUMMARY
The United States and other “like-minded” OPCW members have used this platform to groundlessly accuse Syria of using chemical weapons.
...the alleged use, on three occasions, of chemical warfare agents by the Syrian army outside Al-Latamna in March 2017.
The country's [Syria's] entire chemical arsenal has been taken out of Syria under the surveillance of the OPCW.
RESPONSE
Recurring disinformation narratives attacking the independence and integrity of the OPCW and absolving the Syrian regime of responsibility for chemical attacks.
Pro-Kremlin outlets began portraying the OPCW as a pawn in Western geopolitical designs around mid-2018, when the organisation was being granted new powers to assign blame for chemical attacks, especially in the Syrian Douma.
On April 8, 2020, the OPCW report concluded that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the perpetrators of the use of sarin as a chemical weapon in Ltamenah on 24 and 30 March 2017, and the use of chlorine as a chemical weapon on 25 March 2017, were individuals belonging to the Syrian Arab Air Force. Attacks of such a strategic nature would have only taken place on the basis of orders from the higher authorities of the Syrian Arab Republic military command.”
On another note, Syria joined the global convention banning the production and use of chemical weapons in September 2013. In August 2014, the Assad regime declared that it had destroyed its stockpile and production sites. But in that year, the UN sent OPCW experts to inspect Syria’s chemical weapons production sites and investigate the chemical attacks against civilians. However, the OPCW has never confirmed that Syria “completely abandoned its chemical weapons program” or that it “destroyed all its chemical warfare stockpiles and destroyed its chemical-weapons production facilities.” Read more about that claim on Polygraph.
You can check similar cases in our database that claim that OPCW became a tool for the US and its Western allies, that it smeared whistleblowers and doctored evidence to blame Damascus for the chemical attack, or that the OPCW Ltamenah report was written under Western political pressure.