Paris – Syrian Network for Human Rights:
The Director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), Mr. Fadel Abdul Ghany, participated in a dialogue forum with the Masarat Political Development Center entitled ‘The recent report of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), and the role of the Syrian Network for Human Rights in documenting chemical attacks’ on the Zoom platform, on Sunday, April 18, 2021.
Mr. Fadel Abdul Ghany spoke about the SNHR’s methodology in documenting chemical weapons attacks, referring to 222 attacks documented on the SNHR’s database, all of which have been cumulatively worked on since the first documented use of this weapon in December 2012.
Mr. Abdul Ghany observed that Syria had ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention in September 2013, noting that since acceding to the Convention, the Syrian regime has carried out some 184 attacks to date according to the SNHR’s database, and briefly addressed defining the mandate of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, from which both bodies emerged, namely the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM), whose mandate, until June 2018, was limited to confirming whether or not a chemical attack occurred, without attributing responsibility for the attack, and the Investigation and Identification Team (IIT), which attributed responsibility for four chemical attacks to the Syrian regime, through two reports, the first of which was issued in April 2020, addressing three attacks, while the second was issued on April 12, 2021, in which attributed responsibility to Syrian regime forces, specifically the Russian-backed ‘Tiger Forces’, for carrying out the Saraqeb attack on February 4, 2018. Mr. Abdul Ghany said that the work of the OPCW team is characterized by the highest levels of credibility, reliability and professionalism.