Everyone has chemical weapons

The question is not who to convict, but how to stop the use of weapons of mass destruction

Two days before the chemical attack on the Syrian city of Douma (acknowledged by some participants in the Syrian confrontation and denied by others), on April 5, the head of the Russian Center for the Reconciliation of Warring Parties in Syria, Major General Yuri Yevtushenko, held a briefing during which he said that For the fifth day now, negotiations have been underway with militants of the Jaish al-Islam group banned in Russia on the transfer of the Duma to the control of Assad's government forces.

At the same time, a month earlier, on March 5, the leader of Jaish al-Islam in Douma, Abu Humam, agreed to leave the city, and the process of evacuating the militants and their families began. General Yevtushenko also announced some figures: by April 1, about 30,000 civilians, 738 militants and 3,390 members of their families had left the city.

However, at the end of March, it became known that the contradictions within the leadership of Jaish al-Islam in Duma had become extremely aggravated. As a result, Abu Humam was killed, and the group had a new leader - Abu Qusay. The exit of civilians along the humanitarian corridor was immediately blocked, and negotiations on the evacuation of militants from Duma had to be started anew.

And on April 7, the first reports of a chemical attack on Duma appeared.

In this regard, it is worth recalling that Jaish al-Islam is exactly the group that was officially convicted of using chemical weapons in March 2016 in Aleppo. The use of chemical weapons was recorded on March 7, 2016 during the fighting in the Sheikh Maqsoud district of the city of Aleppo. On that day, many victims of the militants' counter-offensive were taken to the hospital, operating under the patronage of the Red Crescent - doctors stated "suffocation and convulsions due to poisoning with gases banned worldwide - such as chlorine."

Representatives of the Kurdish self-defense detachment (YPG) distributed a video recording of the moment of the explosion of a blank filled with a poisonous substance. And the official representative of the Syrian Kurds, Reizan Khedu, then stated that during the shelling, after the explosions of mines launched by the militants, yellow smoke with a strange smell was formed.

The evidence was so strong that the Jaish al-Islam group was forced to admit the use of chemical weapons ( details in Novaya, No. 38 of April 11, 2016 )

Why didn't Jaish al-Islam deny the chemical attack in March 2016? In a number of countries, for example, in Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the group is recognized as a "moderate opposition" - political opponents of Bashar al-Assad. The Islamists simply had no choice: to deny the chemical attack, the evidence of which, I repeat, is too obvious, means to put the entire group on a par with the Islamic State banned in Russia. Moreover, the victims were taken to the hospital, the main staff of which are citizens of the United States and Great Britain.

That is why, recognizing the use of chemical weapons, representatives of Jaish al-Islam stressed that the field commander who made the decision to "chemical" shelling of Aleppo would be punished.

Whether this field commander was punished or not is unknown. But the chemical attack in Aleppo showed that the Jaish al-Islam group has both ammunition filled with poisonous substances and specialists who know how to handle these weapons.