Perhaps most widely-seen is a BBC News report from December 11 -
"'I want justice': Victims of Syria chemical attacks speak freely for first time" by Yogita Limaye, which gives the name "Tawfiq Diam" and the photo at right.
The Guardian, Bethan McKernan, December 14, gives "Tawfiq Diab, 79" - with video report
Arabic-language video interview for Asharq News, December 15: auto-translate gives "Toufiq Diab"
NPR audio interview with Leila Fadel, posted December 17 (transcript), gives "Toufic Diab (ph)" All cited quotes are (Through interpreter).
Al-Jazeera 1 Dec. 18 gives "Tawfiq Diam, 45"
Later, Al-Jazeera 2 Dec. 28 gives "Tawfiq Ali Diab." A middle name sneaks in?
Also Arabic-language videos I didn't take anything from yet: 12/16 New Arab - Al-Jazeera 12/17 (is that 3 Al-Jazeera appearances?)
Add 1/2: TRT word Dec. 31 "Tawfiq Ali Diab is the only one left of his family"
Islamchannel video with subtitles (similar to or same as some others)
Anadolu Agency 12/26 gives "Abu Ali" with enough details to match the guy, but with some different details
Caolan Robertson and Audrey McAlpine
video report, Jan. 5 gives "Tawfiq"
I had a look and his account(s) include inconsistencies, both internal (between reports) and external (with the other evidence, including with other dubious claims). Al Jazeera 2: "Tawfiq still struggles to cope with the memories of that day."
Two ages are given - 45 and 79 - and neither seems correct. He appears to be somewhere between these, maybe around 60. (note soon after: he might be saying he's 45, having been BORN in '79. That adds up and seems possible. A very gray 45)
Diam is not a personal or family name I recall seeing anywhere, so I assume it's Diab, but strange that it came through as Diam twice (BBC, Al Jazeera 1). But even Diab does not appear as a family name for any publicly named Douma victims. The names he gives for his four killed children all appear, more-or-less, but with the last name Bakriyeh (see list below). 11 of 35 identified victims have this very rare name and others (wives, in-laws) are also related. As I noted here and also here, the family could be prisoners taken and killed by Jaish al-Islam over their relation to a rival military commander, Mohammed Diab Bakriyeh, founder of Douma Martyrs' Brigade.
So that should be his family name, just not given here, perhaps for a good reason. But it was revealed by Michael Weiss on X: "One victim mentioned in this BBC report on Assad’s Douma chemical attack is Tawfiq Ali Diab Bakriyeh..." This fits with the name issue noted above, and was published before "Mr. Diab" came out with another part of this name: Ali. This name suggests he may be a nephew of the commander, perhaps the son of an older brother named Ali Diab Bakriyeh. The girls previously noted as likely relating, from the middle name Diab, are Tawfiq's alleged daughters.
Weiss continued: Mr. Bakriyeh is "...a man Russia Today and its conspiracist allies in academia and the blogosphere were looking to dox, making him susceptible to regime retribution." This takes some space to consider here. He cites and links to a 2021 article he co-authored at the US-backed propaganda outfit "Newlines" gloating over how a sleazy "sting" by regime change activists snared an anti-war academic apparently trying to work with some kind of Russian agent. Someone at the CIJA ("Commission for International Justice and Accountability" - charged with fraud in the course of their fraudulent work) managed to catch Paul McKeigue, a colleague at the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media, trying to get "Ivan" (the CIJA account) to dox and expose the witness - at least as Weiss et al. characterize it.
This is not a story I ever learned of past published articles and Paul's public statement, after which he dropped out communication with me and, as far as I know, everyone in our network. He admits some fault for falling into a trap and accidentally doxxing some his own contacts to an enemy attacker. He doesn't think his making contact with a Russian agent would be wrong (and I can only be sure that it's a wrong look), and he doesn't seem to mention the alleged spying in discussion.
As the Newlines article explained the story:
Stephen Mangan, a reporter for Ruptly, a Russian state media organ, shared with McKeigue personal details about Syrian eyewitnesses who attested, contra the Working Group’s conspiracy theory, that a chemical attack did indeed take place in the city of Douma in April 2018. Despite Mangan’s fulsome cooperation in providing McKeigue with what would otherwise be privileged aspects of a field reporter’s findings, McKeigue was so suspicious of the countervailing evidence that he instructed “Ivan” to spy on Mangan, too.
Stephen Mangan was the Senior Verification Editor at the RT-linked Ruptly. The doxxing of the witness was apparently by Mangan, with those leaked details. It's not clear if Paul or Piers had asked for this, or if they ever had anyone "spy" on or expose him further, but I suspect this allegation was totally invented by the CIJA camp in order to smear their opponents.
Weiss shared a later e-mail from Paul to "Ivan" - presumably provided to Newlines by CIJA - relating Mangan's report on the witness. He and Piers "are skeptical of this," he wrote, asking "how could such a witness have been overlooked by all the journalists who have previously investigated this incident, yet Mangan's stringers met him by chance in the street?" The verification chief seemed to believe the witness' story, having "verified" it however, so "either he is very gullible or he is not what he appears to be," Paul surmised. "We suspect that Mangan is up to something. ... Our suspicion is that this is some kind of "provocation" (to use the Russian term) in which Mangan will announce that his investigation has found evidence confirming that there was a chemical attack in Douma, that Ruptly has suppressed the story and he has resigned from Ruptly to tell the world." He cites Liz Wahl and Sarah Firth as doing just this in 2014, and notes "our contacts at Sputnik tell us that they also have been targeted by infiltrators."
I can see why Paul might be skeptical of the witness and perhaps the journalist. He was deep into understanding the managed massacre of captives that probably did occur, and here's another local talking about this physically impossible "attack." And here is a Russian media figure seeming to use that account to argue back against and lead Western academics - who were miles ahead of him regarding evidence and verification - to accept the opposition narrative. That seems pretty strange to me as well.
I did a quick search. Ruptly's "Verification Unit" dates back to at least 2019. Mangan was "of Ruptly" if not heading that in a 2020 podcast discussing Deepfakes and Manipulated Media. He was investigating in Douma and contacted Piers Robinson, reportedly, in December, 2020. In February, 2021 there was a webinar on "fact-checking excellence" with VU chief Mangan and Ruptly head of news Laura Lucchini (on LinkedIn). There was this episode soon after in March, and then nothing later that I've found. And it seems this Ruptly report never came out. Was it suppressed? I didn't see anything about a resignation to confirm Paul's suspicion, but this continues to feel a bit strange.
At any rate, this is the witness referred to, speaking with Mangan in 2019, and ending up at the center of that episode. As far as I can tell, Mangan was the only one doxxing the witness then, and Weiss is the only one publicly doxxing the man's (supposed) full name now. Of course, everyone can "speak freely" now that the regime is gone, aside from perhaps sleeper cells or the like, and Al Qeada v2.0 is running the place, so presumably it's much safer now. Maybe Weiss can finally publish the e-mail(s) he had to keep secret for containing personal details like that.
Forced to lie for years?
Tawfiq told Yogita Limaye for the BBC report "If I'd spoken out before, Bashar al-Assad's forces would have cut off my tongue. They would have slit my throat." Both of those, at least! Possible exaggeration aside, "We were not allowed to talk about it," he says.
There's no mention there of the coerced lies he would mention a week later to NPR's Leila Fadel; they did want him talking about it, he now says. "Syrian intelligence forced [Tawfiq] to say that it was terrorists and gunmen who killed his family. I don't know where people got the story of a chemical attack, he would say. It's made up. ... If he didn't confirm the state's lies, he would be taken, maybe worse, he says. Syrian state TV and Russian state TV came to interview him, and he'd repeat his rehearsed story." "They even showed me pictures of my children in the attack and asked if they were mine. And I would say, no, it's fake." He says "officers" were present "telling us that you can't say anything." Else.
Al Jazeera 1: “They told us that they didn’t use chemical weapons, but it was the terrorists and armed groups who did,” Diam recalled, with resentment. The Guardian: “After I was awake I started asking questions but police came and told me ‘don’t ask about them’,” he said, referring to his killed family. “I was arrested and spent a week at the police station. They told me ‘we will cut off your tongue’ if you speak." Wrongly.
Anadolu: "Abu Ali said the regime forced him to deny the use of chemical weapons, making him claim in Russian and Syrian media that his family had died in bombings."
Robertson/McAlpine: he was visited by the Russian media, major generals of the SAA, and "local doctors" who were "always telling me what to say: that my kids just died "during the war" not by a chemical attack. ... I am supposed to say that the smell was from dust and the odors of war remnants and artillery shells."
So he says he was forced to say that there was no attack, that there was an attack but by the terrorists, and that the terrorists killed his family, but not in that attack. He says they even made him specify that some Douma attack victims - his actual children - were not his children (did somebody say they were?). He says he repeated these lies more than once, but I haven't seen or heard of any such footage or reports ever being published.
In an Arabic-language
video interview for Asharq News, December 15, he says for "all these years" "I haven't been able to say a word." At least, none that was true.
NPR: FADEL: It must have been hard to not be able to say - to have to lie for all that time.
FADEL: "Yes," he says.
By this, you would never see Tawfiq claiming those gassed kids as his own, or claiming they died in any chemical attack that either didn't happen or was done by the terrorists. He knew the stakes. He "buried that dangerous memory," as NPR's Fadel put it.
Nonetheless, Tawfiq has spoken at least once to Ruptly, as discussed above, in perhaps the same single interview he mentioned to Al Jazeera: "Diam added that regime officials brought along a journalist from a Russian network who requested an interview about the chemical weapons attack. He said he told the journalist and security officers what they wanted to hear under duress."
What "lies," if any, did he tell in this interview? If it's the Ruptly one, it sounds like he told much the same story he now does, but that's not entirely clear. He probably was not explicit on the manner of attack or government blame, or else this would probably be mentioned by Weiss, if not in Paul's e-mail to "Ivan." To the extent he did hold back, that could be genuine fear or a performance of fear. But as Paul said "this witness has identified his family among the victims" of the attack, something Tawfiq now says he was forbidden to do.
If this is the same interview mentioned above, he claims this was all said under duress by the government, forcing him to say some of the things they had also threatened to kill him or cut out his tongue for saying. Yet it seems he never was killed or de-tongued for speaking up, leaving him free to now claim that he would have been harmed if he ever spoke the truth, and that's why he had "to lie for all that time." But the very fact this guy was supposedly targeted - over suspicions upon hearing his story - is a reminder that he has, in fact, spoken up with about the same, dubious story he tells today. This raises doubts about his credibility and thus about all his different stories.
Family / name / list issues
(Optional section - in short, the names he gives or similar appear on lists of the dead, but half the time it's just similar. This could reflect bad research or memory on the witness' part or sloppy list-making by others - unclear)
No children with the family name Diab appear in published victim lists, but the 4 names Tawfiq give seem to match up - with some variable issues - with 4 entries sharing the family name Bakriyeh (listed below). As mentioned above, his full name is supposedly Tawfiq Ali Diab Bakriyeh, and he just left half of that off in these interviews. for whatever reason. Further, a man named Tawfiq should have kids with that as their patronym (middle name). According to some lists, just one of the claimed 4 does (Mohammed Tawfiq Bakriyeh), but according to other lists none do. The 2 girls tend to have Diab as their middle name - as if their father was Diab, not Tawfiq. A possible namesake son Ali (named after his grandfather) is usually given no middle name, From the list I made at the time based on the Douma-based VDC:
Mohammad Tawfeq Bakriyeh - Adult - Male [sic]
Jouri Diab Bakriyeh - Child - Female
Qamar Diab Bakriyeh - Adult - Female [sic]
Ali Bakriyeh - Adult - Male [sic] (Douma victim analysis masterlist)
Here's another where Ali also has no middle name, the girls also have Diab, and Mohammed again has Tawfik: SNHR "The Unprecedented”.pdf. I also saw a list where all 4 have Diab as a middle name, and some lists don't give any of them middle names. Ages: BBC heard they were aged between 8 and 12. NPR heard the youngest, Jouri, was in the first grade.
It's not clear how accurate any of these lists really is, but this variation could indicate a story problem. It could be Tawfiq - or a perhaps a real but deceased Tawfiq currently being portrayed by an actor - is the father of Mohamed only, or of none of them.
NPR's Fadel was shown "Pictures of his Hali (ph = Ali), Hamar (ph = Qamar), Muhammed (ph) and Judy (ph = Joury) as babies, as toddlers, as little kids. In one, Muhammed is smiling with a fake mustache on just like his dad's. In another, his kids pose just outside the building where they were eventually killed." After Assad's fall, Tawfiq says "I put their pictures up" on Facebook, "and I wrote the martyrs of the chemical attack" now that he can speak freely. I didn't yet find this Facebook posting or try to match these to any seen victims.
A week earlier, but perhaps after that Facebook posting of "pictures" he only had one picture of the kids: BBC 12/11: "Not a day goes by when I don't think of my children," Tawfiq says pulling out the only photo he has of them, his eyes welling up with tears." It's the 4 kids outside a building. A week later, he had a bunch of photos, maybe with others helping after they saw the news story. That could be. Or maybe this was just the one he had on his phone at the time.
AJ2 says "his five children died," followed by "Tawfiq still struggles to cope with the memories" and his repeated showing of just 4 kids in photos. Had he forgotten one? Perhaps the youngest one, who was still a baby? Could be just a translation issue. Will see if that can be sorted out.
The Guardian report at least mentions the name of "his wife, Hanan." No Hanan is listed among the dead anywhere I've seen, but there's a Hanadi Bakriyeh - Adult - Female. Noting later: he says Hanadi in the video. The text report just got it wrong, among several other things. For his wife to have the same name as him would be unusual for Muslims. Was that already her name, were they Christians, or what? Perhaps the listing just got it wrong.
Fadel's report for NPR also mentioned 3 brothers: The subject Toufic/Tawfiq and "Rifat" (phonetic) - who both lived in this building with their wives and kids - and Mej (ph = Majd?), who lived nearby and rushed over to help. Mej "tried to shake their other brother awake. Rifat's (ph) bare skin would peel away at his touch. By day's end, Rifat and his whole family were dead..." There is no "Rifat" listed on any victim list, The closest is probably Rateb Bakriyeh, with at least one apparent child, Muhammad Rateb Bakriyeh. Maybe the list got it wrong, or the reporter, or the alleged survivor Tawfiq.
Add 1/1/25: I forgot to watch the Guardian video or follow up on the brother's family. Tawfiq says his brother Rateb Bakriyeh (not Rifat) and his brother's wife Insaf (listed: Insaf al-Hallaq) died, along with their 5 children (Haytham, Mohammad, Hadeel, Rahaf, and baby Jouri - all listed). NPR heard Jouri was just 40 days old. These 7 plus his own wife and 4 kids = all 11 named Bakriyeh plus one wife named Hallaq = 12 Bakriyeh deaths. He claims to be the sole survivor of this possibly targeted family, speaking for all the rest, and swearing they were sitting at home until Assad dropped gas on them.
He shows a photo labeled Haitham (هيثم) with that nephew, seemingly aged around 15, holding baby Joury in a dark, sparse room somewhere, with a weak or sad smile. Both may be wearing exactly the clothes they would die in - a possible sign of captivity. Victim B2 as I dubbed him has a consistent age and face, and wears the same style JAKMAN shirt and perhaps the same trousers. But all the victim's clothing and perhaps hair seem lighter brown hair than in the image, where it all seems black. These could show the same boy and outfit, if the phone image is color-shifted and over-contrasted, and/or if this is from bleaching, which seems at least partly to be the case. Baby Joury is probably infant I2 (noting all white jumper and apparent hood, both of which I1 lacks).
Rahaf was already identified somewhere as G8, pink striped sweater (visible here on the left). I cannot yet match the other 2 or any of Tawfiq's children.
Add 1/6: One source I saw (?) said Tawfiq had re-married with new children, and he's seen in a highly-decorated home with 3 children in some videos, all aged about 6 and under. But this point remains unclear. To the Guardian he says "I was able to continue with my life with the rest of the people who are here," failing to mention marrying any of them. The NPR report (no visual) says "Toufic is in his brother Mej's (ph) home just above the family tire shop" as he spoke.
Revising the burial spot?
This new central witness seemingly revised, in-between interviews, his story on his family's burial spot. The BBC report from December 11 includes this:
"Khalid and Tawfiq took us to a mound by the side of a road, a short drive away. They believe this is where the regime took their family's bodies and buried them in a mass grave. Looking down on the ground, amid gravel, mud and stones, pieces of bones are visible, although it's not possible to tell if they are human remains."
The spot is shown in a photo with Tawfiq and another alleged survivor, Khaled Nusseir, at a barren lot next to some kind of park, captioned "the victims could have been buried in a mass grave." Tawfiq says he knew this spot where his family was likely buried and looked towards it tearfully at times, but he never visited it until now because the regime "would have executed me." The report notes "Tawfiq wants the graves to be dug up, so he can give his family a dignified funeral."
This spot was previously reported as the opposition's secret burial site (Kobs geolocation - f/c). Mr. Nusseir himself said it was near the zoo, and the government soon reported a terrorist mass grave was discovered just south of Jalaa park, next to the Douma zoo. Large-scale digging was done just south of there around March, 2018. Then the opposition SNHR mapped this spot as where
the regime dug up the bodies - all back in 2018 (
me on X).
Michael Kobs on X questions this site's relevance, noting little change between satellite views, and that's worth considering. But I wonder how different it would look after bodies were added and then removed again, I still see a likely body-moving truck added to the site, maybe ready to remove any more bodies they found, and I remain impressed with how sources on both sides pointed to this spot with strange digging. Why dig in advance, back in March? The government offensive was well along by then and Jaish al-Islam's grip on Douma seemed doomed. They expected deaths, maybe of some hostages they didn't want to release, and this spot was likely prepared for that purpose.
Either way, most sources in and outside Douma have agreed for years this is where the bodies were until the government took them away. Yet in December 2024, Tawfiq and maybe Khaled still think - or pretend to think - the bodies are still buried here. "Tawfiq wants the graves to be dug up." But just a week after tearfully highlighting this spot, it seems he changed his mind and said the government took the bodies away, and now he doesn't know where they went. "FADEL: He doesn't even know where his family's buried. He says the bodies were taken by the regime." In fact, by the 14th, the Guardian (video) report heard "to this day, he is still not even sure where their bodies were taken by regime forces."
"Taken by the regime" can be read as from the attack site, whereas everybody knows it was the White Helmets who took the bodies away on April 8, well before Syrian forces controlled the area. And many people including me have known for years where they were reportedly buried and later exhumed. But more logically, he refers to the same removal from that mass grave everyone else already knew about; he finally got on board with what everybody else has been saying for years.
But why the delay? Did he just learn about the body removal in between interviews, or what? Maybe he didn't get out much. But was Khaled Nusseir, who joined them on this trip, also just out of the loop all these years? Some kind of error by the reporter also seems possible, but it seems like a hard error to make. This looks like a serious discrepancy, but one so big it barely makes sense and fairly well begs another answer.
Add 1/6: As Caolan Robertson and Audrey McAlpine wrapped up their interview, Tawfiq wanted to show them something remote. He drives there on a motorcycle as they follow in the hazy dusk. At the site the narrator says "this is known as slaughter street, the site of the mass graves where his family are buried" (present tense).
A promo post with the photo at right said "He is pointing at the grave where they were buried, in secret, by the regime." He's pointing down into the trench where it doesn't seem that any digging occurred (but did it? this trench was formed at the same time of burial - between March 26 and April 13). The video report has Tawfiq saying
"After the regime entered Douma, they dug up the bodies and took them to an abandoned building and burned them with diesel. I wish I was with my family. I wish I wasn't alive." It's not clear how he learned these details and no more, and it's unclear if he says they were re-buried here afterwards "in secret" or if, as said elsewhere, he has no idea where they were taken.
Other Issues
5 or "5 or 6" men survived?
In 2018, as I noted, alleged survivor Khaled Nusseir said exactly five people from his basement survived. Diab is one we never clearly heard from, and he's more fuzzy on the number: "Just five or six men in this compound survived," he says in the BBC report, presumably including himself now. "Even I almost died. I was in hospital for 10 days," he also said. Maybe no one noticed him surviving, being taken to a hospital, recovering 10 days later and then, as he says, staying a week at the police station. I don't suppose that's the explanation, but his story seems to leave room for it.
Attack details / Inside-outside issues
Tawfiq is clear in reporting an aerial and thus government chemical attack as others do: "The chemical barrel came from up there, and it left a hole. The chemicals leaked into the building." (NPR) Guardian video: they were home at 7:05 pm when the attack happened. (Add 1/2: In this video, he says "I smelled the smell. It was 7:03.") This is some 1/2 hour before the accepted attack. Maybe it was just a last noted time before the attack?
NPR: "That night, Toufic says, he heard booms. He and his family rushed to the basement for shelter, like they always did when strikes and fighting between the regime and rebels intensified, thinking it would be safer. But once they noticed the strong smell of chlorine and disinfectant, they tried to get outside." Note they knew to go up and/or to fresher air once the heavier-than-air gas sank into the basement. Everybody in Douma reportedly knew this, and it's just why people braved the gas to go back inside and sometimes even up to the 2nd floor.
BBC: "Tawfiq said his family was just outside his ground floor home when the bombs hit. "I heard an explosion and people shouted on the streets 'chemicals, chemicals'. I came running out. There was a foul smell." So just he was hiding in the basement while the rest were gathered outside for some reason? Note: there wouldn't be an "explosion," just a heavy thud followed by a minutes-long gas release.
To Al-Jazeera 2, he says there was a "powerful explosion" when the cylinder hit, and then he heard neighbors out in the street shouting "chemical!" "I rushed out, saw
yellow smoke in the air (gesturing a rising, expanding plume of the heavier-than-air gas rising from something, as it also sank into the house). Then, maybe since he saw it rising,
"I immediately took my family to the basement," contrary to common sense, widely known protocol, and his other accounts. Same report: "Tawfiq still struggles to cope with the memories of that day."
Anadolu: "Abu Ali, a resident who lost his wife and four children in the 2018 attack" and they're named "Omer, 12; Ali, 11; Muhammed, 10; and Cudi, 8." To Anadolu, he said "the family had been sheltering in a basement but “I had stepped out to get food for my family. As I returned, I saw people dying at the shelter's entrance. Then I lost consciousness.”
So it's quite unclear in what order and why he and the others went to and escaped the basement, or if he was even there, but after this... BBC: "I saw yellow foam coming out of people's mouths. My children were not able to breathe, they were choking. I saw people lying in the street," he says. Guardian video: "I crawled here." NPR: "FADEL: So he just pointed to the road right in front of the building, and he said, all - I laid here. All of the bodies were right here and in the entryway of this building."
They were out in the street, foaming and passing out on the street, he too passes out and lays there, all out there and also just inside - mostly inside, actually, and a bit up on the 2nd floor, but either way ... not carried all that far from the truck, as I see it, before they abandoned the operation with one body still on the stretcher. But he uses different words to over-explain this scene.
No water to wash with?
"Diab" told NPR "Right before [the attack], an explosive barrel was dropped in this neighborhood, so the - all the water tanks were broken, so we couldn't even wash with water." Islamchannel: "some went into the open apartments to wash but there was no water." He claimed to rush outside first thing before passing out there. When did he ever try a sink or see anyone else trying?
Other reports are explicit on the victims successfully washing their faces and hair at every available sink, faucet, or basin on the ground floor and second floor, and doing nothing else before they keeled over and died (apparently, people in Free Syria think washing your skin with water helps your lungs stop melting, and I guess that's why they say regime cut off the water). Their deaths or immobilization seemed so sudden to the OPCW that the victims weren't even covering their faces yet - the first thing most would do in less than a second - or turning to escape the gas ("The victims do not appear to have been in the midst of attempting self-extrication or respiratory protection when they collapsed, indicating a very rapid or instant onset."). But they did allegedly manage to wash their faces and hair before they fell. Hm...
Images from 2-3 hours after the "attack" show many victims with faces recently washed, hair still wet, with damp rags nearby. It seems they were washed by someone - with ample water - less than an hour before, or well after the victims had died, perhaps trying to wash the soot off of some or to scrub off the worsening yellow-brown stains. (see
the mysterious washing of faces and hair and below). It's possible someone brought in water to do this, for whatever reasons, but the stories of people washing at the sinks and Tawfiq's story of no water cannot both be true (and I don't think either is).
Yellow foam
"...I saw yellow foam coming out of people's mouths. My children were not able to breathe, they were choking. I saw people lying in the street," he says. Asharq news auto-translate renders yellow foam as "butter," something I've seen happen before. This sounds like something that appears instantly on exposure when real-world pulmonary edema usually takes hours to form, and probably no less than 30 minutes. Also this foam is unusually yellow, later shifting to brown. See next entry.
Skin issues
NPR: "Rifat's (ph) bare skin would peel away at his touch." This is a strange thing to say. Neither chlorine nor sarin nor whatever was actually used usually causes skin to peel away, and I don't think I've seen that on any bodies, nor do I have an offhand guess what he might be talking about.
Side-note: The Guardian's report also heard from Abdulhadi Sariel, 64, from across the street, with a weird description of the dead: “No one in that basement came out alive. Their bodies turned to black, their clothes went green and were burnt, they crumbled and stuck to their bodies. The clothes looked like wood,” he said. nothing like what we actually see, and I don't even have a guess what he's referring to.
The victims do have unusual skin issues attesting to a horrible death: irritation and often a worsening yellow-then-brown discoloration on the upper face, which I've never seen before and seems like a special clue to how they died. Their edema foam is also unusually yellow, then brown later on. (see
Douma's mask of death part 1) Why that effect in the mucous and in the skin effect there? Why are their eyes universally free of redness that chlorine exposure usually causes? (Tawfiq says in
this video "my eyes turned red" though he wouldn't see his own eyes, no one else had the slightest redness. Robertson/McAlpine: "I was in intensive care. They put on oxygen mask and my eye was [swollen] and my [cheek] also they were red like this." )
And why does the skin effect have exclusions around their eyes in the shape of swimming goggles?
I propose an answer here;
they didn't die from sarin or chlorine exposure but from something - perhaps as simple as diesel exhaust - that produces nitric acid on contact with water. Unlike chlorine's hydrochloric acid, nitric acid is known to cause yellow-then-brown discoloration in skin and other body proteins (like in mucous).
Like chlorine, this gas/smoke was probably not paralytic, so someone hanging around long enough to breath a fatal amount could mean they were trapped or tied down. In fact, my best explanation for all signs is that
the victims were bound upside-down at the time of exposure, and bizarrely fitted with swimming goggles (or similar), as the pattern of skin effect suggests. Even not going that far, some top toxicologists,
consulted and then ignored by the OPCW investigation, agreed a simple irritant would not very well explain victims dropping in place, even in piles, when there was an available exit so close by. They almost have to have been trapped or bound for some time, and there is no room for this other death at all in Tawfiq's story of an attack on his home, or in the many similar stories lodged by others. And a story with no room for the relevant facts is not a trustworthy story.
A sarin myth supporter
The original explanation for so many dropping dead from a simple irritant was that sarin was also used. This never made much sense, and of course no sarin traces were found, so we've been left with this mystery. But Tawfiq helps revive the original explanation.
BBC: "There was a foul smell. ..." A "foul" and also "strange" smell - a bit like rotting flesh but not quite like anything they've ever smelled - is exactly how people most often describe the highly impure sarin used in Syria. Chlorine has a distinct "clean" smell most people recognize - "bleach and disinfectants" - and that few would describe as "foul." I don't suspect he actually smelled the nerve agent, but it's interesting that he uses this word, as if he knows a few things about the stuff. Does he want us to believe he smelled sarin?
The sarin claims Tawfiq perpetuates - perhaps unwittingly - also came with reports of over 100 dead. It's unclear how he would know the full death toll or where all these other people died, but "Tawfiq says there were more than 100 dead." It's a belief shared with sheikhs Abu Omar Burkush & Abu Azzoun, highly sectarian Sunni activists allied with Jaish al-Islam. Both men were insiders for this and the 2013 Ghouta chemical massacre of, I suspect, captives in some sort of gas chambers.
They would say in 2019 that exactly 187 were killed, seen by them and counted down in "the bunkers," whereas neither man is seen in any video from the supposed crime scene. They also mentioned secondary contamination chlorine doesn't cause, suggesting sarin was used after all.
Add 1/2:
TRT also spoke with Basel Oyoun who said "we buried 130 people" killed in this attack, and the narrator was left saying: "what compound was used is still not clear."
Imprisonment? A Militant?
Anadolu: "He also said he was imprisoned for 18 months in various detention centers, adding that he was tortured for six years by a regime-affiliated officer who sought to suppress the truth about the chemical attack." The 6-year torture should be mostly in-home, after release.
Add 1/6: Robertson/McAlpine: "I was held and brutally tortured in many interrogation branches. In Harasta prison the 10th wing I was held for 8 months, getting tortured. The prison warden told me if you ever spoke about it, the next time you'll be sent to Sednaya."
NPR cited a "family tire shop," Islamchannel called him "a car mechanic," he has deeply dirty hands at all times, and is repeatedly seen with or riding a motorcycle. It could be he is a motorcycle mechanic, and previously worked for Jaish al-Islam, and maybe general agent or part-time fighter, perhaps involved in the chemical massacre, and arrested on those grounds? As noted, the victims may have died from prolonged exposure to diesel exhaust (probably the most common source for the nitric acid that seemingly killed them). Could a mechanic like him help rig this up? He also says their bodies were burned later, with diesel fuel. Why does the mechanic know that?
He sounds like a serious supporter of the new government, anyway: Guardian: "we waited for God's justice and God bestowed mercy on us and the liberation army and their leader Ahmed al-Sharaa may Allah support him" Robertson/McAlpine: "May the God take revenge from Iran and Russia. Those were helping the regime, killing our children and our families."
Tawfiq in summary, some others, calls for investigation
Summarizing the accounts of Tawfiq Ali Diab Bakriyeh: he claims that he was forbidden to speak of the chemical attack or how it killed his children, and forced to tell contrary stories. But this clashes with his prior telling, to a rather strange Ruptly reporter, how his wife and children were killed in the chemical attack. The details remain unclear, and he likely did avoid explicit blame - either in fear or in a performance of fear. But this raises questions about his reliability.
The slow-revealing of his name and giving two incorrect ages are both unusual. The names of his claimed children, wife, and brother are given differently than previously listed, but it's not clear what this means. He seems to revise his family's burial spot, in between interviews, from current to former, as if just learning the bodies were reportedly exhumed and moved, as even I knew 6 years ago.
There's a strange variance in attack details, with "powerful explosion" sounds that shouldn't happen, a sinking gas they smelled vs. a rising gas he saw, and whether they left or entered the basement upon learning it was a chemical attack. Like many others, he reports sudden foam and unconsciousness chlorine does not cause in reality. He claims there was no water when he probably wouldn't know and there apparently was, and everyone else says there was. Finally, two points of possible adherence to the original sarin claims ("foul smell," over 100 killed) raise the possibility that he's promoting that narrative previously maintained by Islamist insiders.
I wouldn't say this is the shadiest witness I've seen, but it's also not a great record. Based on these qualifications as a supposedly genuine survivor, NPR's Fadel saw fit to pass on Tawfiq's deep desire for a new investigation, apparently to improve on the OPCW's existing probes by blaming Assad even more clearly. "We want an investigation," Tawfiq said. "We want them to come and investigate. We want the rights of our children, our rights as well." To him, this means "Everybody who was involved [should] get prosecuted."
The BBC report crowed how witnesses can "speak freely for the first time" now that the Assad regime is gone; under the new, Al-Qaeda-spawned government, political pressure on witnesses and terroristic threats can be totally ruled out. This story featured three witnesses including Tawfiq, all seemingly locals who just happened by. Tawfiq was not speaking for the first time and, as far as I can tell, had already told much the same story back in 2021.
Another was a well-known alleged witness from 2018: Khalid Nusseir (here Naseer) "Khalid Naseer says his baby daughter Nour, his two-year-old son Omar, and his pregnant wife Fatima were also killed in the 2018 chlorine attack." (error note: earlier he said 2 daughters died, Nour and Qamar, not a son and a daughter. Qamar can sound like Omar, and might be presumed a "son".) Previously, Khaled said he said he smelled a strange gas, but drank some water and all was fine, failing to mention anyone dying, yet still pointedly disagreeing with a crowd of other witnesses that there was not even a strange gas. He also said in a different setting that his wife, 9-months pregnant, and his two infant girls all died in the attack, which he blamed on the just-defeated Jaish al-Islam. Amid a string of accusations against them and the White Helmets, Khaled speculated that the cylinder didn't seem dropped from the sky but set there by hand and opened. (others said much the same, but this doesn't match the evidence of manual placement of the cylinder AND the bodies). (
see "the witnesses who don't blame Assad"). He says he found his 2 girls in the basement 10+ hours after he passed out at a clinic, then carried them to the hospital, while 2 girls in a photo match - for almost the exact clothing - with 2 girls removed early (but from the first floor, not the basement -
see here). I don't think any of his story is true, but he seems to have accurate inside information about body removal, and he was the first to say the bodies were buried near the zoo.
Now that he can "speak freely," this highly unreliable alleged witness blames the just-defeated side again. But this time, we can definitely trust him? He says "The whole world knows Bashar al-Assad is an oppressor and a liar, and that he killed his own people" and "We want fresh investigations into the attack" because "He says the testimony given by many to the OPCW fact-finding mission in 2019 was not reliable."
"Abdul Rahman Hijazi, one of the eyewitnesses who testified before the mission," also happened by and spoke to BBC, saying "he was forced to give the regime's version of events." ... "They told me to say that people were killed because of dust inhalation not chemicals." He claims he was threatened with death to do this, but then he and his family "were shunned by the community for years after he gave the testimony. He found it tough to get a job. ... Now he also wants a fresh investigation." So Hijazi previously denied an attack, perhaps just due to the political situation and threats that came with it, but in the new situation under Salafist rule, with its own crimes to conceal and myths to perpetuate, seeking community acceptance and improved job prospects, we're to assume his word can finally be trusted as free from coercion or influence.
Some had reported smelling no gas where they were, or speculating that people had died from smoke and dust. Several claim they were compelled to say this, and it seems entirely possible, if stupid. But a government-enforced denial of an attack doesn't prove there was an attack - they could just see it as suppressing misinformation and they could be right. These accounts were never as relevant as some think, and were pretty well overruled by the investigators with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) as they pointed to government guilt for the attack.
Most of the news reports I've cited unquestioningly point to the reports of the OPCW, ignoring revelations that key findings, notably in the areas of ballistics and toxicology, were censored and altered to achieve the ridiculous final product. NPR: "Assad's government denied ever using chemical weapons. And its ally Russia said the Douma attack was "staged"." The OPCW's own engineering sub-team also concluded the gas cylinder impacts were probably staged manually ("there is a high probability that both cylinders were placed ... manually rather than dropped from an aircraft.") This is what Khaled said, and anyone can see this for themselves in the available images. But this was "corrected" in the end, overruled and replaced, and now this obvious fact is presented as nothing but Russian disinformation.
The same kind of distorted product has followed prior alleged CW attacks in Syria, in my assessment, elevating, diminishing, or ignoring evidence seemingly based on whatever helps to blame the targeted government. But never before Douma were there whistleblowers and leaks to show us there was more real science involved, perhaps in all these cases, but it was being suppressed. Is this why someone decided Douma in particular needs a new probe? Is there some stupid way to re-investigate everything now to blame Assad even more clearly, and pretend even harder that the science agrees with the implausible, contradictory and propagandistic accounts of alleged survivors, militant occupiers and their allied "civil defense"? How are all these chance-encounter witnesses getting this same memo and calling for a "fresh investigation"?
We do indeed need a new investigation, for this and other alleged chemical attacks, that can truly follow the science instead of the regime-change agendas of certain state sponsors. According to the last best word of that science, a genuine crime against Humanity transpired in Douma on April 7, 2018; the mass murder of perhaps 187 kidnapped civilians, using toxic chemicals under circumstances a great many labor to obscure.
But the investigation these guys want would, I fear, even better absolve the true criminals. It would "verify" again that Assad's chlorine barrel bombs punched through or not-quite-through 2 roofs, one of them bouncing onto a bed and the other spraying explosive fragments before stopping outside the hole it made, and this time with zero dissent. It would find that all the unexplained signs and symptoms are due to sarin mixed with the chlorine after all; the prior science to the contrary just needs re-written. It would accept new samples loaded with fresh sarin and assume most traces at the time were vanished from the whole environment by Syria and/or Russia. And such a probe would also seek to raise the death toll, I predict, to 187 or probably even higher, based on verbal claims and maybe shocking new "discoveries."
This probe would hold officials of the old regime fully to account for what they were found to have done, maybe along with all the Alawites, and would advocate punishments for Russia, or Iran or whatever other enemies they want to implicate. But it would never pursue punishment at all for Assad's grave violations of the laws of physics. In fact, these offenses seem to be encouraged and necessary for the regime-change machine.
The only parts that would need done differently: there can be no contradictory ("unreliable") witnesses who might be coached (by the wrong side). There can be no honest engineering study or toxicology assessment to erase and replace halfway through the process; vague approvals of the told stories will be sought the first time around. Finally, this time they need to completely stop any whistleblowers from revealing the true process. The OPCW will need less ethical employees and/or tighter controls.
Or maybe this is how the OPCW's demise begins. Considered untrustworthy due to allowing leaks in the past, the organization will be deemed unfit to handle the urgent re-investigation of Douma. Perhaps a new body will be floated to handle that and other such things in the future, and these alleged witnesses were sent out to set the stage for this.
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