The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has placed locating and securing what remains of ousted President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons programme at the top of its urgent tasks, its new Director-General Sabrina Dallafior said during a visit to Damascus on Tuesday, while praising the new Syrian authorities’ cooperation on the issue.
Dallafior said at a joint press conference with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani that “the urgent priority now is to assess the sites posing the greatest risk”, explaining that the task required “identifying the remnants of the chemical weapons programme under Assad and taking the necessary measures to secure them”.
Syrian authorities pledge to co-operate with the organisation
The programme was for years at the centre of repeated accusations that the former president had used chemical weapons against civilians during the Syrian conflict. The new Syrian authorities pledged to co-operate with the organisation as soon as they came to power in late 2024. They told the UN Security Council early last September that they had begun destroying chemical materials dating from the Assad era, in the first operation of its kind since the conflict began.
Al-Shaibani said that “removing chemical weapons from Syria is a responsibility towards the victims and a commitment to ensure that future generations do not experience these atrocities again”. He revealed that the authorities had arrested 18 suspects in the chemical attacks case, including senior officers, ahead of their prosecution, alongside the destruction of the chemical materials.
The Syrian foreign minister added that his country had provided the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons with more than 100,000 official documents and facilitated its teams’ access to records and witnesses linked to the case. He said he had discussed with Dallafior “a roadmap to help us move from this progress towards the final closure of the case”, while the Director-General welcomed Syria’s commitment to co-operation.
Documents and prosecutions in the chemical attacks case
Izumi Nakamitsu, head of the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, said last month that an OPCW team had verified in August an operation carried out by the Syrian authorities to destroy 42 aerial bombs. Last July, the organisation approved the restoration of Syria’s full membership rights, after stripping it of its voting rights in 2021.
This followed the organisation’s conclusion that the Syrian air force had used sarin and chlorine gases against civilians. Syria joined the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in 2013 and agreed to declare and surrender its stockpile of toxic substances under Russian and US pressure, and to avert threats by Washington and its allies to carry out air strikes.
The Syrian army had previously been accused of using chemical weapons in areas held by opposition factions, killing more than 1,400 people, according to US intelligence agencies and human rights organisations, while a UN report cited compelling evidence of the use of sarin gas. The Syrian government at the time denied involvement in the attacks and agreed to surrender its arsenal, but did not fully disclose the programme and sought to mislead inspectors.
