On April 12, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) released its second report on Syria, by the Investigation and Identification Team–an attributive mechanism created within the agency under pressure from the Anglo-Americans–which found that “there are reasonable grounds” to believe that a Syrian military helicopter dropped a cylinder on the town of Saraquib on Feb. 4, 2018, releasing a cloud of chlorine gas that sickened a dozen people. According to the UN release on the same report, the Syrian government refused to provide information in its possession relevant to the investigation. Furthermore, the investigators claimed that they did not uncover any information indicating that “rogue units or individuals” could have been responsible for chemical weapons use in the 2018 Saraqib attack.
The U.S. State Department jumped on the report to justify keeping genocidal sanctions against Syria. In an April 14 statement, State spokesman Ned Price claimed that the Assad government is responsible for “numerous” atrocities against the Syrian people, including the use of chemical weapons. “The United States concurs with the OPCW’s conclusions cited in this report and continues to assess that the Assad regime retains sufficient chemicals to use sarin, to produce and deploy chlorine munitions, and to develop new chemical weapons,” Price insisted. The OPCW report “is but the latest reminder of Assad’s flagrant repudiation of the rule of law.”
“All responsible nations must stand in solidarity against the deployment of chemical weapons by preserving the global norm against such use; and we must be ready to hold the Assad regime, and anyone who chooses to use these horrific weapons, accountable,” Price concluded.