{"id":193294,"date":"2019-08-17T06:08:10","date_gmt":"2019-08-17T06:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=193294"},"modified":"2019-08-19T08:31:06","modified_gmt":"2019-08-19T08:31:06","slug":"how-the-opcws-investigation-of-the-douma-incident-was-nobbled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=193294","title":{"rendered":"How the OPCW\u2019s investigation of the Douma incident was nobbled*"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul McKeigue, David Miller, Jake Mason, Piers Robinson Members of Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media<\/a> — Off-Guardian Aug 16, 2019<\/h1>\n
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One of the alleged victims of chemical weapons poisoning, Hassan Diab, shown in Al-Jazeera\u2019s coverage of the alleged chemical attack. Click to see the full-size image<\/p><\/div>\n

The creation in 2014 of a new mechanism \u2013 the \u201cFact-Finding Mission in Syria<\/strong><\/span>\u201d<\/a> (FFM) \u2013 to investigate alleged chemical attacks allowed the OPCW to bypass the procedures laid down in the Chemical Weapons Convention for investigations of alleged use, and to set its own rules for these investigations.<\/span><\/p>\n

The roles of the Director-General and the newly appointed director of the Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) are mostly ceremonial. The effective boss of the OPCW is the Chief of Cabinet S\u00e9bastien Braha, a French diplomat, and the Principal Investigator of the IIT is Elise Cot\u00e9, a Canadian diplomat. Although these individuals have obvious conflicts of interest in relation to Syria, the OPCW lacks any procedure for managing such situations.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Technical Secretariat\u2019s excuse for suppression of the Engineering Assessment<\/strong><\/span><\/a> \u2013 that evidence that the cylinders were manually placed rather than dropped from the air is \u201coutside of the mandate and methodology of the FFM<\/strong><\/span>\u201d<\/a> \u2013 is fallacious and contradicts OPCW\u2019s published reports<\/strong><\/span><\/a> on the Douma incident.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was already clear from open-source evidence, as we pointed out in an earlier briefing note<\/a>, that the Interim and Final Reports of the FFM on the Douma incident had been nobbled. Our sources have now filled in some of the details of this process. Specifically:<\/span><\/p>\n