LONDON: Syrian authorities arrested Ahmad Habib Ali, a former colonel in the Bashar Assad regime, for his involvement in sarin gas attacks between 2013 and 2017 during the country’s civil war.
The Interior Ministry said that Ali oversaw the production and storage of chemical weapons, including sarin gas, as a former head of Unit 417 at the Scientific Studies and Research Center, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency.
The former colonel was arrested in the coastal province of Latakia. Authorities accuse him of producing about 20 aerial bombs filled with sarin gas, each weighing 250 kg. The explosives were used in attacks on Syrian towns between 2013 and 2017.
The chemical agent sarin was used by Assad’s forces in August 2013 against residents of Ghouta, an agricultural area on the outskirts of Damascus, resulting in the deaths of at least 1,400 people, many of them children. Between 2011 and 2024, pro-government forces used sarin more than 50 times.
The SSRC was founded in 1971. Its operations collapsed when the regime fell in December 2024, while Israel also conducted strikes against its facilities.
