Victims of chemical assaults in Syria are talking freely for the primary time

Tawfiq Diam is emotional as a result of it’s the first time he can converse freely about what occurred to his household in 2018, in Douma, within the japanese suburb of Ghouta in Damascus.

“If I had spoken earlier than, Bashar al-Assad’s forces would have lower out my tongue. They would have lower my throat. We weren’t allowed to speak about it,” he says.

Tawfiq’s spouse and his 4 youngsters aged between eight and 12 – Joudy, Mohammed, Ali and Qamar – had been killed in a chemical assault on 7 April 2018.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a world watchdog, stated in a report final 12 months that it believes a Syrian Air Force helicopter departed the close by Dumayr Air Base shortly after 7 p.m. that day and launched two yellow cylinders that hit two residence buildings, releasing extremely concentrated chlorine fuel.

Tawfiq stated his household was simply outdoors his floor flooring residence when the bombs hit.

“I heard an explosion and other people had been shouting on the street ‘chemical substances, chemical substances’. I ran outdoors. There was a foul odor. I noticed yellow foam popping out of individuals’s mouths. My youngsters could not breathe, they had been suffocating. I noticed individuals mendacity on the road,” he says.

The OPCW says at the very least 43 individuals had been killed. Tawfiq says there have been greater than 100 deaths.

“I virtually died too. I used to be within the hospital for 10 days. Only 5 or 6 males on this compound survived,” he says.

Assad’s authorities has denied ever utilizing chemical weapons. And its ally Russia stated the Douma assault was “staged.”

Eastern Ghouta was one of the crucial fiercely contested areas for 5 lengthy years through the Syrian civil warfare.

The regime ultimately besieged it and, along with its ally Russia, indiscriminately bombed the world in an try to realize management from insurgent fighters led by the Jaish al-Islam group.

Crossing it now, the destruction wrought upon it’s all round us. It is troublesome to discover a single constructing that doesn’t bear the scars of warfare, lots of which have been bombed so badly that they’re merely shells of constructions.

On multiple event in Eastern Ghouta, chemical weapons – prohibited by the Geneva Protocol and the Chemical Weapons Convention – had been used to assault Douma.

Bashar al-Assad’s forces captured Douma shortly after the chlorine assault, and the victims’ tales had been by no means absolutely heard.

“Not a day goes by that I do not take into consideration my youngsters,” Tawfiq says, pulling out the one picture he has of them, his eyes filling with tears.

As we discuss to Tawfiq, increasingly more persons are coming to us to inform us their tales.

Khalid Naseer says his child daughter Nour, two-year-old son Omar and pregnant spouse Fatima had been additionally killed within the 2018 chlorine assault.

“Those who had been killed had been largely youngsters and girls.”

The anger he needed to repress for six years comes out.

“The entire world is aware of that Bashar al-Assad is an oppressor and a liar and that he killed his personal individuals. My spouse was killed two days earlier than giving start,” he shouts, his feelings operating excessive.

The chlorine fuel assault was not the one occasion of chemical weapons getting used within the space.

In 2013, rockets containing the nerve agent Sarin had been fired at a number of rebel-held suburbs in japanese and western Ghouta, killing a whole bunch of individuals. UN specialists confirmed using sarin however weren’t requested to assign any blame.

Assad denied that his forces fired the rockets, however agreed to signal the Chemical Weapons Convention and destroy Syria’s declared chemical arsenal.

Between 2013 and 2018, Human Rights Watch documented at the very least 85 chemical weapons assaults in Syria, accusing the Syrian authorities of being accountable for most of them.

In addition to Douma in 2018, the OPCW Investigation and Identification Team recognized the Syrian military because the perpetrator of 4 different instances of chemical weapons use in 2017 and 2018. A earlier fact-finding mission, which was not tasked to determine the perpetrators, it discovered chemical weapons had been utilized in 20 instances.

Khalid and Tawfiq took us to a mound on the aspect of a highway, a brief drive away. They imagine that’s the place the regime took the our bodies of their relations and buried them in a mass grave.

Looking from under, among the many gravel, mud and stones, you’ll be able to see items of bones, though it isn’t attainable to say whether or not they’re human stays.

“This is the primary time I’ve set foot right here, I swear to God. If I had tried to return right here earlier than, they (the regime) would have executed me,” Tawfiq says.

“During Eid, after I missed my household, I’d experience on the aspect of this highway and shortly look in direction of this (the mound). It made me cry.”

Tawfiq desires the graves dug up so he can provide his household a dignified funeral.

“We need new investigations into the assault,” Khalid says. It says the testimony given by many to the OPCW fact-finding mission in 2019 was unreliable.

It is a declare corroborated by Abdul Rahman Hijazi, one of many eyewitnesses who testified earlier than the mission, who says he was compelled to offer the regime’s model of occasions.

“The intelligence officers arrested me and advised me to lie. They advised me to say that individuals had been killed attributable to inhaling mud and never chemical substances. They threatened me that if I did not settlement, my household wouldn’t be protected. They advised me that my home was surrounded by the regime’s males,” he stated.

One of the findings of the 2019 OPCW report on Douma states: “Some witnesses acknowledged that many individuals died in hospital on April 7 attributable to heavy shelling and/or suffocation attributable to smoke and dirt inhalation.”

Abdul Rahman says he and his household had been shunned by the neighborhood for years after giving the testimony. He discovered it troublesome to search out work.

Now he additionally desires a brand new investigation.

“I need the reality to return out. I am unable to sleep. I need justice for each guardian.”

Additional reporting by Aamir Peerzada, Sanjay Ganguly and Leen Al Saadi