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The Telegraph, April 22, 2018
Secret burial of Douma victims to preserve vital evidence; Syrians hope
bodies will be key to investigation when inspectors access site of
suspected chemical attack
By Josie Ensor
IT TOOK the men most of the night to bury the bodies. They dug the dry
earth with whatever they had to hand - mostly small tools, which made
for a laborious task.
But it was no ordinary burial, and when they were done, instead of
marking the site with headstones and flowers, they covered it over with
weeds and dirt.
The bodies were some of the 48 victims of a suspected chemical attack on
the Syrian town of Douma in Eastern Ghouta.
The diggers were local residents and members of the Jaish al-Islam rebel
group attempting to preserve what could become the most important
evidence from the night of April 7. They hope the corpses will help the
UN-backed Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)
establish whether, and which, chemicals were used.
"Only three or four men know where the site is," Brigadier General Zaher
al-Sakat, Syria's former chemical weapons chief who defected several
years ago, told The Sunday Telegraph. "They were buried just as they
were found. It will be easy to get samples from the hair and clothes and
eventually prove what was used."
Yesterday, after waiting for a week for clearance from Damascus,
chemical weapons inspectors finally entered Douma. The nine-strong team
from the OPCW were able to collect samples from one site in the town two
weeks after the attack.
Syria and Russia, which backs the regime and has military police
controlling the three-storey house in Douma where the victims died, have
been accused by the US of deliberately obstructing the inspectors,
giving themselves time to potentially tamper with the evidence.
The diggers this week gave the coordinates of the burial site to Raed
Saleh, the head of the White Helmets, a group of civil defence rescuers
who operate in opposition areas. Mr Saleh has since passed them to the OPCW.
But the site of the bodies, which had been under Jaish al-Islam's
control, has now fallen into government hands.
And while the regime does not yet know the location, the OPCW is
dependent on it for access.
Jerry Smith, a former OPCW weapons inspector who worked in Syria in
2013, told The Telegraph the watchdog had no choice but to wait for the
approval of host states.
"In cases like this, there could be stakeholders who don't want the
truth to come out, or want their truth to come out," said Mr Smith, who
is now the managing director of RameHead Consulting International in
Salisbury. "They have influence and the ability to exert that influence
on the investigation."
He said that, while the delay was a concern, it was "almost impossible"
to completely destroy all traces of a chemical attack involving nerve
agent, which doctors suspect was mixed with less toxic chlorine.
Nerve agents like sarin rapidly degrade in normal environmental
conditions, but Mr Smith, said they can "hang around for some time".
"There are examples of samples being taken in Halabja several years
after the Saddam [Hussein] attacks which showed nerve agents", he said,
adding that "micro quantities" smaller than a pinhead can become trapped
in soil and clay. "They have key markers which have no alternative
explanation."
However, the presence of chlorine can be more difficult to establish,
particularly after such a long period of time, and it is difficult to
prove whether it was administered in weaponised form, because it is used
for many other purposes.
He said the OPCW would be looking to gather three types of evidence:
biological and environmental samples, statements from survivors, and
documentary evidence such as videos and pictures. A number of survivors
did manage to flee to rebel-held Idlib in northern Syria near the
Turkish border and will likely be questioned.
Eastern Ghouta saw an even deadlier chemical attack in 2013, when more
than 1,200 people died and thousands more were injured. The OPCW later
confirmed in its report that sarin had been used.
The government, under pressure from Russia, subsequently agreed to hand
over its entire stockpile in 2014. However, Brig Gen Sakat and others
believe they did not declare a substantial amount of sarin and other
precursor chemicals, which they still possess. The US and its allies
have said they hold both the regime and Russia responsible for the Douma
attack, and Moscow has since launched a considerable disinformation
campaign to de-flect blame. Russian officials have offered contradictory
explanations for what happened on April 7. Theories propagated include
that there was no chemical attack, then that there in fact had been a
chemical attack but it was carried out by rebels, and lastly that it was
a "false flag" operation by the UK and White Helmets.
Influential social media activists and bloggers have seized on the
theory that it was carried out by jihadist groups or spies in order to
put the blame on the Bashar al-Assad government and provide a
justification for Western intervention.
The swirl of disinformation has not been helped by the silence of many
of the key witnesses, who have found themselves at the centre of an
escalating international conflict.
According to organisations supporting hospitals in Syria, many of their
medics who treated patients that night have since left Eastern Ghouta
for rebel-held areas elsewhere in the country. Dr Ghanem Tayara, a
Birmingham GP and the director of the Union of Medical Care and Relief
Organisations (UOSSM) - the largest medical relief agency in Syria -
claims they were searched for samples and potential evidence before they
did.
Many are too scared to speak out publicly because they have family
members in government-held areas.
Meanwhile, some of those who decided to stay in Douma have since
recanted accounts they gave to UOSSM at the time. After Russia took
control of Eastern Ghouta on April 12 - days after the attack pushed
Jaish al-Islam to agree a surrender deal - interviews with doctors,
nurses and medical students who treated the patients were broadcast.
Some 13 appeared on a progovernment TV channel saying they had not seen
any cases of chemical exposure, but had seen many suffering asthma
attacks prompted by the dust from an airstrike and the panic that followed.
Some The Telegraph spoke to who know the medics say they believe they
were speaking under duress.
Zaher al-Sahloul, a Syrian-American doctor and adviser to the UOSSM,
said: "We know these people very well. They were our physicians.
"At least half of those appearing in these interviews communicated with
our teams [in Turkey and the US] about the chemical attack and what
symptoms they saw in the patients. They changed their statements after
the Russians took over.
"I'm sure they are not just fearing for their lives but the lives of
their relatives, too. That is to be expected." Dr Sahloul said one
senior doctor in Douma made contact with a Russian official while the
town was still under opposition control, asking to be allowed to stay
and not be sent to Idlib.
"Part of the deal they agreed was for him to convince the other doctors
to stay under certain terms, but I don't think the doctors expected to
be put under this much pressure," he said.
Asked if he considered it a betrayal, he said: "Of course not, they are
under unbelievable stress. I would have done the same myself to protect
my family."
Dr Sahloul is confident, however, that eventually "the truth will out",
as too are the chemical weapons experts.
"The science always beats the politics," said Mr Smith. "And when you
get the science right, it's irrefutable, whatever the crazies might say."
'They were buried just as they were found. It will be easy to get
samples from the hair and clothes and eventually prove what was used'
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