Bashar al-Assad still has tonnes' of chemical weapons

Syria had handed over its entire chemical arsenal to the UN’s Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in 2014 after hundreds of people were killed in a sarin gas attack in Damascus. However, it has been revealed that President Bashar al-Assad deceived the UN and may still has hundreds of tonnes of chemical stockpile.

Syria’s former chemical weapons research chief Brigadier-General Zaher al-Sakat told The Telegraph Mr Assad did not declare large amounts of sarin precursor chemicals and other toxic materials.

In 2014 the Obama administration had declared that chemical weapons stockpile had been “100 per cent eliminated”. But after a suspected chemical attack last week attack in Syria’s Khan Sheikhoun that left 86 dead there are suspicions that Mr Assad may have held some back.

“They [the regime] admitted only to 1,300 tonnes, but we knew in reality they had nearly double that,” Brig Gen Sakat, who was one of the most senior figures in the country’s chemical programme, told the British newspaper. “They had at least 2,000 tonnes.”

Gen Sakat, who defected in 2013, said weeks and months before OPCW inspectors arrived the regime was busy moving its hoard. He believes that Syria may still have several hundred tonnes of sarin agent as well as precursor chemicals, aerial bombs that could be filled with chemical agents and chemical warheads for Scud missiles.

He said tonnes of the chemicals were transported to the heavily fortified mountains outside Homs and to the coastal city of Jableh, where the Syrians and Russians have their largest military base.