Facing Syria cover-up outcry, OPCW chief lies and US, UK, France evade

Pushback with Aaron Mate

Pushback with Aaron Maté

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4.7 • 594 Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2021

⏱️ 67 minutes

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Summary

Support Pushback at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/aaronmate Facing new outcry over the Syria cover-up scandal, OPCW chief Fernando Arias has been caught lying, while the US-UK-France are desperately trying to change the subject. Aaron Maté recaps recent meetings at the European Parliament and United Nations where the growing Douma controversy was center stage. The US-UK-France bombed Syria in April 2018 after accusing it of a chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma. Leaks later revealed that OPCW inspectors found no evidence of a Syrian government chemical weapons attack. But their findings were suppressed, their original report was censored, and the team was sidelined. Rather than having their concerns addressed, the inspectors have since faced a concerted smear campaign. On April 15, OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias faced questions about the Douma cover-up from Mick Wallace and Clare Daley of the European Parliament. Both Wallace and Daley asked Arias why he has refused to address the Douma cover-up and meet with the dissenting inspectors. The meeting chair, former French cabinet minister Nathalie Loiseau, tried to cut-off the questions and even apologized to Arias for them being posed. Arias then made a series of excuses and even false claims. The following day, the Douma scandal was discussed at an Arria Formula Meeting of the United Nations Security Council. The ambassadors of the nations that bombed Syria in April 2018 -- the US, UK, and France -- tried to dismiss the Douma cover-up scandal as Russian propaganda and refused to offer any substantive comments on the issue. The invited briefers at the meeting included Hans von Sponeck and Lawrence Wilkerson, two veteran diplomats who have signed a Statement of Concern about the Douma scandal, alongside other notable voices including five former OPCW officials. In his comments, von Sponeck revealed that Arias, the OPCW chief, refused to read the statement and returned it to sender. Audio: Aaron Maté recaps the European Parliament meeting on April 15 and UN Security Council Arria Formula meeting on April 16. Featuring: Mick Wallace and Clare Daley, Members of the European Parliament; Fernando Arias, OPCW Director-General; Hans von Sponeck, former UN Assistant Secretary-General and UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq; Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Secretary State Colin Powell; Richard Mills, Deputy US Ambassador to the UN; Nicolas de Reviere, France’s Ambassador to the UN; Jonathan Allen, UK Ambassador to the UN; Jose Bustani, former OPCW Director-General; and Aaron Maté of The Grayzone. Support Pushback at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/aaronmate

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Pushback. I'm Marian Mate. There is growing public pressure on the OPCW to account for its Syria cover-up scandal, the censorship and suppression of its investigation into an alleged chemical attack in Duma in Syria in April 2018.
0:22.7	The response from the OPCW and powerful states that back it has been very revealing.
0:29.2	They are basically refusing to address the facts of the Duma cover-up, and they're also even
0:34.7	telling lies, as is the case of Fernando Arias, the OPCW Director General.
0:41.0	So this is what we're going to look at today, recapping how the OPCW has faced continued pressure at public forums
0:48.4	and how they have responded with evasions and outright lies.
0:52.9	So just to recap what the story is for those who might not be
0:56.0	familiar, in April 2018, something horrible happens in the Syrian city of Duma.
1:02.1	Dozens of bodies are filmed inside a building. They have suffered some kind of horrific attack,
1:07.8	and they are dead. The U.S., Britain, and France then bombed Syria days later.
1:12.5	They accuse it of committing a chemical weapons attack in Duma and killing those people.
1:17.4	Then the OPSUW sends in a team of investigators. It's the first time ever that the OPCW has
1:23.2	actually gotten a fact-finding mission to the site of an alleged chemical attack in Syria.
1:28.7	About a year later, they put out a final report saying that there are reasonable grounds to
1:32.7	believe that chlorine as a chemical weapon was used in Duma and the inference of the report,
1:38.4	although it's not outright stated, but the inference is that the Syrian government is guilty.
1:43.3	But then we get a series of extraordinary leaks,
1:46.3	and these leaks show that the actual team that went into Duma for the OPCW did not reach
1:52.6	the conclusion put out in its name. And in fact, that team wrote a report, which found that there
1:58.3	was no evidence of a chemical weapons attack in Duma.
2:02.3	And some of the evidence that they found actually pointed to this being staged on the ground.
2:06.9	It's not being an attack by the Syrian government.
	...

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