Ex-OPCW chief defends Syria whistleblowers and reveals he was spied on before Iraq war

Pushback with Aaron Mate

Pushback with Aaron Maté

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4.7 • 594 Ratings

🗓️ 18 October 2020

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In a Grayzone exclusive, José Bustani, the former head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, speaks out in support of two veteran OPCW inspectors who challenged a US-backed cover-up of their investigation in Syria. Bustani also reacts to the recent US-UK-France-led effort to prevent his testimony at the UN Security Council about the OPCW's Syria cover-up scandal. And Bustani reveals new details of how he was targeted in the lead-up to the Iraq war, when the Bush administration engineered his ouster for impeding its plans to invade. Bustani discloses for the first time that his office was bugged – and that the OPCW's then-head of security, a U.S. citizen, vanished right after this was discovered. It's a case of history repeating itself, with the world's top superpower once again trying to silence a veteran diplomat from the Global South, whose courage and principle challenges a pro-war deception. Guest: José Bustani, veteran Brazilian diplomat and the first Director-General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Support Pushback at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/aaronmate

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to pushback. I'm Aaron Mate. The former head of the OPCW, Jose Bustani, is today speaking out
0:10.7	over a new U.S.-led effort to silence him, 18 years after the U.S. ousted him for standing in the way
0:18.1	of the Iraq War. Josay Bustani is a veteran Brazilian diplomat who served as the OPCW's first director general.
0:26.6	At the UN Security Council last week, the U.S., Britain, France, and their allies voted to prevent
0:33.1	Bustani from speaking.
0:34.9	He had come to the UN to defend two former OPCW inspectors who challenged
0:40.1	a cover-up of their investigation in Syria. These inspectors found evidence that the Syrian government
0:46.8	did not commit a chemical weapons attack in the city of Duma in April 2018. Their findings
0:53.6	undermine the basis for the bombing of Syria by the
0:56.9	U.S., U.S., U.S. U.K. and France that same month. But the inspector's evidence was suppressed
1:02.3	under U.S. government pressure. In voting to block Jose Bustani's testimony, the U.S.
1:08.6	and its allies are trying to silence him as well. While they may have
1:12.6	succeeded at the UN, they have not silenced Jose Bustani completely. He recorded his UN statement,
1:18.6	which we have published at the Gray Zone.
1:21.6	At great risk to themselves, they have dared to speak out against possibly regular behavior
1:26.6	in your organization. And it is, possibly regular behavior in your organization.
1:28.3	And it is, without doubt, in your organizations and in the world's interest that you hear them out.
1:35.3	If the OPCW is confident in the robustness of its scientific work on Duma and in the integrity of the investigation,
1:43.3	then it should have little to fear in hearing out its inspectors.
1:50.8	If however the claims of evidence suppression,
1:53.7	selective use of data, and exclusion of key investigators
1:58.2	among other allegations are not unfounded, then it's even more imperative
	...

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