HRW Damages Reputation with Report on Chemical Weapons in Syria: Russian Defense ministry

MOSCOW- A report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) alleging that the Syrian army used chemical weapons in Aleppo in 2016 is damaging further the organization’s reputation, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said.

“Such reports prepared by laymen with reference to the data of social networks and stories by unknown anonymous witnesses over the phone are destroying further the already ambiguous reputation of Human Rights Watch,” the general said, Itar Tass reported.

 “If Human Rights Watch would really like to sort out the situation with the use of chemical weapons in Syria, then it would be necessary to start with the use of mustard gas chemical warfare agent by militants in the community of Maarat Umm Hawsh in September 2016. This crime has real witnesses, including Russian and foreign journalists, real affected persons with concrete names, really discovered munitions with the remains of mustard gas and soil samples,” he said.

Russian servicemen of the Center of Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection jointly with the Syrian side submitted all the available proof to experts of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the general said.

“Now it is already February 2017 but it is not even discussed when the OPCW will finish its expert study of the obtained proofs of mustard gas use in Aleppo and identify the country, which transferred it to militants.”

It has to be established with what this is linked: with the pressure of a specific mustard gas producer country or with the slowness of some officials – and this should be the subject of HRW’s special attention, if this is really a human rights organization, the general said.

Atlantic Council’s charges over Aleppo refuted as false long ago

All charges against Russia over Aleppo found in the report of the US center called Atlantic Council contain nothing new, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Tuesday.

“We’ve closely studied the Atlantic Council’s report devoted to the Syrian army’s operation to retake Aleppo to find nothing new. All of the charges and propaganda fakes mentioned there have long been dismissed. Moreover, they were dismissed twice – by facts presented at our briefings and by real life – testimonies and interviews by the thousands who have been able to get back to peaceful life in eastern Aleppo,” Konashenkov said.

“One has an impression that the report is a compilation of depositions by Bellingcat, Aleppo Media Center, Syrian American Medical Society, the White Helmets and other ostensible ‘activists’, ‘human rights campaigners’, and ‘volunteers’, whom Russian officers from the reconciliation center took out of eastern Aleppo by bus and let leave for good to head for Idlib, for Jabhat al-Nusra,” Konashenkov said.

He also remarked that the report kept quiet about mined school buildings, ammunitions depots and fire emplacements in the buildings of hospitals that had been closed down, militants’ warehouses brimming with foods and medicines and mass graves of civilians killed with shots in the head.”

“Not a single word is said there about what the real residents of eastern Aleppo have been left with after these ‘White Helmet clowns’ have left for Idlib. There is no mention of what real Russian and Western journalists [not some anonymous activists], who have personally visited eastern Aleppo managed to catch on camera,” Konashenkov said.