Syrian authorities arrested a former colonel who had expertise in sarin gas depots and chemical weapons manufacturing during the Assad era.
damascus: Syrian authorities on Wednesday announced the arrest of a former official they say was a chemical weapons expert in charge of sarin gas depots and chemical weapons manufacturing during the era of ousted President Bashar al-Assad.
Since Assad’s fall in December 2024, authorities have arrested dozens of people accused of crimes during the country’s 13-year civil war, and began trials in April.
The Interior Ministry said security forces had arrested Colonel Ahmed Habib Ali, describing him as a “chemical weapons expert”.
It also said he was “responsible for sarin gas storage facilities and chemical manufacturing within Unit 417”, a major chemical weapons storage facility near the capital Damascus.
According to the ministry, Ali was “one of the officials who supervised the manufacture of approximately 20 bombs filled with sarin gas, each weighing 250 kilograms, which were used in attacks targeting Syrian cities and towns in 2013 and 2017”.
In the first and deadliest incident in August 2013, the military was accused of using chemical weapons to target rebel-held areas, killing more than 1,400 men, women and children, according to US intelligence and rights groups.
When Syria was at the height of its civil war, the Assad government agreed to hand over its chemical arsenal to prevent US attacks.
Between 2014 and 2017, Damascus was accused of carrying out four more attacks on cities controlled by opposition groups, using sarin and chlorine gas.
Ali’s arrest comes after Syria was reinstated into the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) last week.
The OPCW stripped Syria of its voting rights in 2021 after it discovered that its air force had used sarin and chlorine gas on its own people.
In April, Syria’s judiciary began a series of public trials for former officials on various charges, some of which range from war crimes, committed after the outbreak of popular protests in 2011, which were violently suppressed by authorities.
