Two Syrian docs and a nurse informed AFP in a sequence of interviews over the weekend that Bashar al-Assad’s authorities coerced them into offering false testimony to worldwide investigators after a lethal 2018 chlorine assault.
The three, who handled the wounded at a subject hospital within the rebel-held city of Douma close to Damascus after the April 7, 2018 assault, mentioned they had been summoned to nationwide safety headquarters within the capital.
“I used to be informed… that they knew the place my household is in Damascus,” mentioned orthopaedic surgeon Mohammed al-Hanash, giving public testimony which might have been inconceivable earlier than the autumn of Assad’s authorities on December 8.
Emergency and intensive care specialist Hassan Oyoun mentioned that “once I arrived earlier than the investigator… his gun was on the desk pointing in the direction of me.”
“I instantly understood what was being requested for and that the target was for us to say” there had been no chemical assault, he mentioned.
Muwafaq Nisrin, 30, who labored as an emergency responder and nurse in 2018, mentioned: “I used to be below stress as a result of my household lives in Douma — like many of the medical personnel’s households”.
The assault focused a constructing close to a subject hospital, the place the wounded had been taken and the place the three personnel had been amongst these working.
A video quickly circulated on-line exhibiting chaos on the facility, with medics treating the wounded together with kids, and a person spraying folks with water.
Assad’s authorities known as the photographs “faux”, and safety companies questioned those that appeared within the video, together with the medical employees whom AFP met.
In January final 12 months, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) blamed the Damascus authorities for the assault, which killed 43 folks.
Investigators mentioned there have been “cheap grounds to imagine” that at the very least one Syrian air pressure helicopter had dropped two cylinders of the poisonous fuel on Douma.
Damascus and ally Moscow mentioned the assault was staged by rescue staff on the behest of america, which afterwards launched air strikes on Syria, as did Britain and France.
– Broadcast on TV –
“A staff of us docs who had been on the hospital went to the nationwide safety constructing and met an investigator, and we tried as a lot as potential to offer obscure solutions,” Hanash mentioned.
“I used to be requested, for instance, what occurred that day… I informed them that I used to be within the working room,” the place chemical assault victims wouldn’t have been taken, he added.
Oyoun mentioned that “all these on the hospital on the time had been put below intense stress, reaching barely hid threats”.
“We denied the incident… we averted responding to sure questions, reminiscent of ‘the place had been the useless taken?’,” he mentioned, and tried in charge circumstances of suffocation on “the mud, the grime and the smoke from the preventing”.
Nisrin, seen within the video serving to a lady in excessive misery, mentioned the authorities “informed us that no chemical assault occurred” and that they “needed to finish this story and deny it in order that Douma may flip a brand new web page”.
The OPCW watchdog mentioned an “elite” Syrian unit often known as the Tiger Power had launched the assault throughout a army offensive to reclaim Douma, and that Islamist rebels had agreed to withdraw the day afterwards.
All three medical personnel mentioned that after the primary spherical of questioning, they had been informed to repeat their responses in entrance of a digicam as testimony for an investigating committee working with the OPCW.
The footage was “edited and a few passages the place deleted or taken out of context to serve the standpoint” of the authorities, Hanash mentioned, and broadcast on state tv the next day.
The trio discovered themselves become false witnesses for the very authorities whose overthrow that they had hoped for.
– Pleasure ‘incomplete’ –
On April 14, the trio — amongst 11 members of the medical personnel who weren’t allowed to return to Douma — had been informed an OPCW fact-finding mission would interview them at a Damascus resort.
However hopes of telling the true story had been dashed when authorities put recorders of their pockets or ordered them to file the interview on their telephones.
“They pressured us to repeat the story that they needed,” Hanash mentioned.
Days later, authorities informed them they’d go to the Netherlands, the place the OPCW is predicated, to testify “on impartial floor”. On April 25, with a number of different witnesses, they travelled to The Hague by way of Moscow.
“We anticipated to fulfill the investigating committee behind closed doorways, however had been shocked” to seek out it was “an open session for members” of the OPCW, Hanash mentioned.
Russia on the time had mentioned Damascus would put ahead witnesses to show that footage of the assault was fabricated.
The OPCW final 12 months mentioned its investigators “thought-about a spread of potential situations” and concluded that “the Syrian Arab Air Forces are the perpetrators of this assault”.
OPCW investigators have concluded that chemical weapons had been used or probably utilized in 20 cases in Syria.
The medics mentioned the findings eased a burden that they had been battling for years.
Hanash mentioned he and his colleagues had waited a very long time for “the safety grip upon us to raise and for the day we may speak honestly about what occurred”.
“We had been completely happy… that our testimony didn’t affect the course of the investigation,” he mentioned.
However till those that carried out the assault are punished, “the enjoyment is incomplete”.
