Postol Confirms Validity of OPCW Engineers Report on Douma ‘Chemical Attack’

May 22, 2019 (EIRNS)—Ted Postol, a professor emeritus of Science, Technology, and International Security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has reviewed the documents prepared by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) engineering team on the faked April 7, 2018 Douma chemical weapons attack, blamed by the British White Helmets on the Syrian government and used to justify U.S., French, and British air strikes on Syrian government sites a week later. The report was suppressed by the OPCW and replaced with obscure reports claiming to confirm the fake charges, even though the engineering team had conducted the only independent, on-the-scene investigation of the charges. The team leaked their report to the British-based Syria Study Group last week. Postol provided his report to the Institute for Public Accuracy on May 21.

Postol reports on the team’s findings, and writes: “I will have a much more detailed summary of the engineering report later this week. For now, it suffices to say that the UN OPCW engineering report is completely different from the UN OPCW report on Khan Sheikhoun [a faked chemical attack blamed on the Syrian government on April 4, 2017], which is distinguished by numerous claims about explosive effects that could only have been made by technically illiterate individuals. In very sharp contrast, the voices that come through the engineering report are those of highly knowledgeable and sophisticated experts.

“A second issue that is raised by the character of the OPCW engineering report on Douma is that it is entirely unmentioned in the report that went to the UN Security Council. This omission is very serious, as the findings of that report are critical to the process of determining attribution. There is absolutely no reason to justify the omission of the engineering report in the OPCW account to the UN Security Council as its policy implications are of extreme importance.”