Syrian medics say were coerced into false chemical attack testimony


By AFP
December 23, 2024

Syrians wave the independence-era flag after midday prayers at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus on Friday - Copyright AFP/File AAREF WATAD
Layal ABOU RAHAL

Two Syrian doctors and a nurse told AFP in a series of interviews over the weekend that Bashar al-Assad’s government coerced them into providing false testimony to international investigators after a deadly 2018 chlorine attack.

The three, who treated the wounded at a field hospital in the rebel-held town of Douma near Damascus after the April 7, 2018 attack, said they were summoned to national security headquarters in the capital.

“I was told… that they knew where my family is in Damascus,” said orthopaedic surgeon Mohammed al-Hanash, giving public testimony which would have been impossible before the fall of Assad’s government on December 8.

Emergency and intensive care specialist Hassan Oyoun said that “when I arrived before the investigator… his gun was on the table pointing towards me.”

“I immediately understood what was being asked for and that the objective was for us to say” there had been no chemical attack, he said.

Muwafaq Nisrin, 30, who worked as an emergency responder and nurse in 2018, said: “I was under pressure because my family lives in Douma — like most of the medical personnel’s families”.

The attack targeted a building near a field hospital, where the wounded were taken and where the three personnel were among those working.

Syrian orthopaedic surgeon Mohammed al-Hanash, at his Douma clinic on December 21, 2024, says he and other medical staff were summoned by national security after the 2018 chemical attack – Copyright AFP JOHAN ORDONEZ

A video soon circulated online showing chaos at the facility, with medics treating the wounded including children, and a man spraying people with water.

Assad’s government called the images “fake”, and security services questioned those who appeared in the video, including the medical staff whom AFP met.

In January last year, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) blamed the Damascus government for the attack, which killed 43 people.

Investigators said there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that at least one Syrian air force helicopter had dropped two cylinders of the toxic gas on Douma.

Damascus and ally Moscow said the attack was staged by rescue workers at the behest of the United States, which afterwards launched air strikes on Syria, as did Britain and France.

– Broadcast on TV –

“A team of us doctors who were at the hospital went to the national security building and met an investigator, and we tried as much as possible to give vague answers,” Hanash said.

“I was asked, for example, what happened that day… I told them that I was in the operating room,” where chemical attack victims would not have been taken, he added.

Oyoun said that “all those at the hospital at the time were put under intense pressure, reaching barely concealed threats”.

“We denied the incident… we avoided responding to certain questions, such as ‘where were the dead taken?’,” he said, and tried to blame cases of suffocation on “the dust, the dirt and the smoke from the fighting”.

Nisrin, seen in the video helping a girl in extreme distress, said the authorities “told us that no chemical attack happened” and that they “wanted to end this story and deny it so that Douma could turn a new page”.

The OPCW watchdog said an “elite” Syrian unit known as the Tiger Force had launched the attack during a military offensive to reclaim Douma, and that Islamist rebels had agreed to withdraw the day afterwards.

All three medical personnel said that after the first round of questioning, they were told to repeat their responses in front of a camera as testimony for an investigating committee working with the OPCW.

The footage was “edited and some passages where deleted or taken out of context to serve the point of view” of the authorities, Hanash said, and broadcast on state television the following day.

The trio found themselves turned into false witnesses for the very government whose overthrow they had hoped for.

– Joy ‘incomplete’ –

On April 14, the trio — among 11 members of the medical personnel who were not allowed to return to Douma — were told an OPCW fact-finding mission would interview them at a Damascus hotel.

But hopes of telling the true story were dashed when authorities put recorders in their pockets or ordered them to record the interview on their phones.

“They forced us to repeat the story that they wanted,” Hanash said.

Days later, authorities told them they would go to the Netherlands, where the OPCW is based, to testify “on neutral ground”. On April 25, with several other witnesses, they travelled to The Hague via Moscow.

“We expected to meet the investigating committee behind closed doors, but were shocked” to find it was “an open session for members” of the OPCW, Hanash said.

Russia at the time had said Damascus would put forward witnesses to demonstrate that footage of the attack was fabricated.

The OPCW last year said its investigators “considered a range of possible scenarios” and concluded that “the Syrian Arab Air Forces are the perpetrators of this attack”.

OPCW investigators have concluded that chemical weapons were used or likely used in 20 instances in Syria.

The medics said the findings eased a burden they had been struggling with for years.

Hanash said he and his colleagues had waited a long time for “the security grip upon us to lift and for the day we could talk truthfully about what happened”.

“We were happy… that our testimony did not impact the course of the investigation,” he said.

But until those who carried out the attack are punished, “the joy is incomplete”.