THE HAGUE: An investigation by the global chemical weapons watchdog established there are “reasonable grounds to believe” Syria’s air force dropped two cylinders containing chlorine gas on the city of Douma in April 2018, killing 43 people.
A report published Friday by a team from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons offered the latest confirmation that the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons during his country’s grinding civil war.
“The use of chemical weapons in Douma – and anywhere – is unacceptable and a breach of international law,” OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias said.
The organization said that “reasonable grounds to believe” is the standard of proof consistently adopted by international fact-finding bodies and commissions of inquiry.
Syria, which joined the OPCW in 2013 under pressure from the international community after being blamed for another deadly chemical weapon attack, does not recognize the investigation team’s authority and has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons.
Despite the latest findings, bringing perpetrators in Syria to justice remains a long way off. Syria’s ally Russia has, in the past, blocked efforts by the UN Security Council to order an International Criminal Court investigation in Syria.
“The world now knows the facts – it is up to the international community to take action, at the OPCW and beyond,” Arias, a veteran Spanish diplomat, said.
The report said there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that during a government military offensive to recapture Douma, at least one Syrian air force Mi8/17 helicopter dropped two yellow cylinders on the city.
One of the cylinders hit the roof of a three-story residential building and ruptured, “rapidly released toxic gas, chlorine, in very high concentrations, which rapidly dispersed within the building killing 43 named individuals and affecting dozens more,” according to the report.
A second cylinder burst through the roof of another building into an apartment below and only partially ruptured, “mildly affecting those who first arrived at the scene,” the report added.
Syrian authorities refused the investigation team access to the sites of the chlorine attacks. The country had its OPCW voting rights suspended in 2021 as punishment for the repeated use of toxic gas, the first such sanction imposed on a member nation.
The painstaking investigation by the organization’s team, was set up to identify perpetrators of chemical weapon attacks in Syria, built on earlier findings by an OPCW fact-finding mission that chlorine was used as a weapon in Douma.
The investigators also interviewed dozens of witnesses and studied the blood and urine of survivors as well as samples of soil and building materials, according to the watchdog agency.
The investigators also carefully assessed and rejected alternative theories for what happened, including Syria’s claim that the attack was staged and that bodies of people killed elsewhere in Syria were taken to Douma to look like victims of a gas attack.
The report found that the two cylinders carrying chlorine were modified and filled at the Dumayr air base and the helicopter or helicopters that dropped them were under control of the Syrian military’s elite Tiger Force.
The OPCW team “considered a range of possible scenarios and tested their validity against the evidence they gathered and analyzed to reach their conclusion: that the Syrian Arab Air Forces are the perpetrators of this attack,” the organization said in a statement.
The ongoing conflict that started in Syria more than a decade ago has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced half the country’s prewar population of 23 million.
Watchdog blames Syria’s air force for deadly chlorine attack
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Watchdog blames Syria’s air force for deadly chlorine attack
- A report published Friday by a team from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons offered the latest confirmation that the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons
Egyptian woman faces death threats for filming alleged harasser
- Case revives longstanding national debate in Egypt over harassment and violence against women
- A 2013 UN study found that 99.3 percent of Egyptian women reported experiencing harassment
CAIRO: A young Egyptian woman is facing death threats after posting a video showing the face of a man she says repeatedly harassed her, reviving debate over how victims are treated in the country.
Mariam Shawky, an actress in her twenties, filmed the man aboard a crowded Cairo bus earlier this week, accusing him of stalking and harassing her near her workplace on multiple occasions.
“This time, he followed me on the bus,” Shawky, who has been dubbed “the bus girl” by local media, said in a clip posted on TikTok.
“He kept harassing me,” added the woman, who did not respond to an AFP request for comment.
Hoping other passengers would intervene, Shawky instead found herself isolated. The video shows several men at the back of the bus staring at her coldly as she confronts her alleged harasser.
The man mocks her appearance, calls her “trash,” questions her clothing and moves toward her in what appears to be a threatening manner.
No one steps in to help. One male passenger, holding prayer beads, orders her to sit down and be quiet, while another gently restrains the man but does not defend Shawky.
Death threats
As the video spread across social media, the woman received a brief flurry of support, but it was quickly overwhelmed by a torrent of abuse.
Some high-profile public figures fueled the backlash.
Singer Hassan Shakosh suggested she had provoked the situation by wearing a piercing, saying it was “obvious what she was looking for.”
Online, the comments were more extreme. “I’ll be the first to kill you,” one user wrote. “If you were killed, no one would mourn you,” said another.
The case has revived a longstanding national debate in Egypt over harassment and violence against women.
A 2013 UN study found that 99.3 percent of Egyptian women reported experiencing harassment, with more than 80 percent saying they faced it regularly on public transport.
That same year, widespread protests against sexual violence rocked the Egyptian capital.
In 2014, a law criminalizing street harassment was passed. However, progress since then has been limited. Enforcement remains inconsistent and authorities have never released figures on the number of convictions.
Public concern spiked after previous high-profile incidents, including the 2022 killing of university student Nayera Ashraf, stabbed to death by a man whose advances she had rejected.
The perpetrator was executed, yet at the time “some asked for his release,” said prominent Egyptian feminist activist Nadeen Ashraf, whose social-media campaigning helped spark Egypt’s MeToo movement in 2020.
Denials
In the latest case, the authorities moved to act even though the bus company denied any incident had taken place in a statement later reissued by the Ministry of Transport.
The Interior Ministry said that the man seen in the video had been “identified and arrested” the day after the clip went viral.
Confronted with the footage, he denied both the harassment and ever having met the woman before, according to the ministry.
Local media reported he was later released on bail of 1,000 Egyptian pounds (around $20), before being detained again over a pre-existing loan case.
His lawyer has called for a psychiatric evaluation of Shawky, accusing her of damaging Egypt’s reputation.
These images tell “the whole world that there are harassers in Egypt and that Egyptian men encourage harassment, defend it and remain silent,” said lawyer Ali Fayez on Facebook.
Ashraf told AFP that the case revealed above all “a systemic and structural problem.”
She said such incidents were “never taken seriously” and that blame was almost always shifted onto women’s appearance.
“If the woman is veiled, they’ll say her clothes are tight. And if her hair is uncovered, they’ll look at her hair. And even if she wears a niqab, they’ll say she’s wearing makeup.”
“There will always be something.”
