Patrick Hilsman's Pro-War Syria Conspiracy Theories at Counterpunch

December 26, 2021

Apologies for being incredibly slow with blog posts (and everything else) lately. I still have some amazing information to develop and share, but it seems like a lull where I'm waiting for something, maybe internal or external, to say it's finally time. But it seems I have now avoided zero posts in all December, after just 2 in November. 

In that vein, I may be saying more later about "journalist" Patrick Hilsman and his background. For now - carpe diem - I'll focus just on what he says, now at the long-esteemed progressive, anti-war site Counterpunch. Conspiracy Theories and Tragedy in Douma, Syria, Part One was published December 5, initially behind a paywall but now freely viewable. Someone may have noticed it's not fit to be premium content one pays to read. 

Hilsman has previously been published at the Intercept, Vice News, The Daily Beast, Vocativ, Syria Deeply, BBC, etc.. At this blog, I've covered his appearance on The Young Turks questioning the reporting of Aaron Maté on the April, 2018 Douma alleged chemical attack, and the related findings of OPCW veteran inspector Ian Henderson, who led the Fact-Finding Mission's initial engineering study regarding that incident. That had found the terrace damage associated with the attack was most likely caused by explosive weaponry rather than the impact of a gas cylinder, which in turn seemed to be manually placed next to that mismatching damage. That's not the one shown in the inset image, but Henderson had serious points against that one as well. Of course his findings were excluded from public OPCW reports, a decision Hilsman endorses. 

At that link, I show Henderson's view to be correct, in great detail; all 4 inner walls of the terrace and at least 3 walls of the room below are marked with obvious, if oddly-spaced, primary and secondary fragmentation marks that can only emanate from about where that cylinder was shown, and the corner it would have impacted first. Cratering at the impact site, spalling across the ceiling below, and some reinforcing bar broken and bent in past 90 degrees, with other bars left intact and passed around, further suggest a blast wave with shrapnel, not a falling gas cylinder that was barely even dented (while its aerial harness was inexplicably stripped off and separately flattened), and then couldn't even fall through the hole it allegedly made.  

Part 2 may revisit Hilsman's dispute with Henderson and reality but will surely cover how he also disagrees with the OPCW's first-consulted toxicology experts; he's certain the chlorine in that cylinder caused the 35 seemingly sudden deaths we were shown, whereas the experts were almost as sure that could not be the case. That might improve on the points he's raised on TYT and elsewhere, but is bound to be absurd. If it ever appears, I should and might cover it here as well. 

For now I'll address part 1, which focuses on the 2018 Russian press conference with Douma locals, including the boy Hassan Diab, where it was claimed there was no chemical attack, on the staged hospital scene Diab as seen in, and its relation to the alleged chlorine attack and fatalities at what the OPCW calls "Location 2." 

Exposing Russian-Syrian Conspiracy to Manipulate Witnesses 

Hilsman decided the witnesses at the "surreal" Russian press conference at the OPCW headquarters in The Hague were "held" - and not just hosted - at a Russian military base, in "frightening" circumstances and almost surely compelled to lie. As reader Andrew put it in a recent comment. the gist is "they used a "military facility" to coerce a boy who by Hilsman's own admission hadn't been a victim of a chemical attack to say... he wasn't in a chemical attack." AFP photo via BBC: note in video footage the total lack of redness in the boy's eyes. This detail has always agreed with his testimony on that point.

Hilsman worries other Russian-held witnesses may have been murdered, maybe when they refused to lie on command; "Russia had promised to produce a far greater number of witnesses to back up claims that were ultimately never substantiated, raising further questions about the location and safety of the witnesses who never showed up. " He theorizes conspiracies that don't even make sense, in the service of dismissing eyewitness evidence and sticking it to "conspiracy theorists" who, by and large, do make sense.

Exposing Lies About What Riam Dalati Said

Hilsman's major thrust involves the findings of BBC Middle East producer/editor Riam Dalati - on seeing two dead children arranged for a photo published as a "last hug" staged photo "expressed disgust on Twitter." "Dalati felt that opposition activists were manipulating the optics of a real tragedy for more emotive images." In a similar vein, Hilsman suggests, Dalati "would eventually come out on record that despite the reality of the Douma chlorine attack, there was evidence that Jaysh Al Islam had staged the hospital chaos to create a more evocative scene for international media." Dalati announced this in February 2019, following on 6 months of investigation. "Dr. Abu Bakr Hanan, a “brute and shifty” doctor affiliated with Jaysh al-Islam" was one of those filming the hospital scene rather than helping, he revealed. "Will keep the rest for later," he said, but these findings still haven't been published, going on 3 years later (via Brandon Tuberville). 

It all caused some sensation, with many skeptics and knee-jerk critics eager to hear a trusted BBC editor admitting something in Douma was staged. Many suggested and some sloppily claimed Dalati had found the whole event was a fraud. Hilsman decries how those tweets "have been endlessly misread and misquoted by conspiracy theorists who, unlike Dalati, claim the attack itself was staged." He notes Dalati's "public rebukes and explicit insistence that the attack indeed took place," and was presumably the sole cause of the 43 reported deaths. But it should be noted he's a BBC news employee, not a chemical weapons investigator who actually understands what makes sense and what doesn't. 

Hilsman shows the Gray Zone's Max Blumenthal for an example (tweet), but I've seen clearer ones (e.g. ZeroHedge via MintPress, and see my take; what Dalati found is "evidence" for the whole attack being staged, to Max, myself, and others). And he suggests Blumenthal's cohort Aaron Maté  - who has read and reported extensively on the subject - did the same, but without bothering to name him: "a Canadian reporter would repeat the bewildered lie that the attack itself had been staged." 

But "repeating" the "lie" he just explained is not what Aaron did. The linked tweet is a short video he made IN Douma: "the site of a major atrocity & pro-war deception: the massacre of civilians by insurgents to frame Syria’s government — a crime covered up the OPCW along w/ US-UK-France." He mentions Dalati's finding in its proper context along with other reasons, and adds now, at my request "I’ve always stressed that Dalati only says the hospital was staged (while sitting on his findings [Thinking face]). Me staying the scene at the apartment is staged is based on the suppressed OPCW findings & open source material showing zero evidence of a CW attack & ample evidence of staging." And he explained at the time, in a second tweet: "I believe, but don't know for sure, that the insurgents killed these victims. It's remotely possible that they died some other way & that the insurgents then used their bodies to stage the scene. Key point is that OPCW's probe into what actually happened was censored." Unless he's lying about his beliefs, that means he didn't issue any lie, repeated, bewildered, or otherwise.

Refuting Lies About the Attack Timeline 

Maybe not a crucial point but well worth including was how "Conspiracy theorists have additionally claimed the hospital footage was filmed before the attack itself," while the bodies at Location 2 "had been filmed hours earlier" than the hospital scene. He allows that some on video may have been victims of the chlorine attack "which had killed civilians at a block of flats earlier," but they would be rather slow cases, and "many" of those seen, if not all of them, were instead "sheltering from conventional bombing in the chaos following" the alleged attack. It's unclear why people would be shouting chlorine and hosing down kids on video "hours" after that incident, but he cites "chaos," and that can explain just about anything to a mind like Hilsman's.

I don't recall seeing this claim that "the hospital footage was filmed before the attack itself" from any "conspiracy theorists," but it's likely someone has argued that, come to think of it. I'm a bit hazy on such claims, and unsure about the details, and so far, I haven't seen reason to question the FFM's final report S/1731 on this point; "Shortly after 19:00, 10 to 20 patients, including children and adults, arrived in groups at the emergency department of Douma Hospital covered in dust and with blackened faces." This refers to the same scene and probably means just after the attack around 7:30 PM, or also put as "shortly after 19:00." That's not before the attack, but it's not hours after it either.

And according to the FFM, the first "images depicting decedents" at Location 2 "were taken between 22:00 and 23:00 on 7 April." NYT had a time stamp of 10:06 PM on what seems to be the first video at location 2, and it seems all other imagery is contemporaneous or later. The signs suggest the victims died around 7:30 or not much earlier, but they were never seen until some 2.5 hours after the hospital scene, not hours before it. 

It's during this time, I suspect, the 35-43 corpses were transported from the gas chamber(s) where they were killed, probably via Jaysh al-Islam's tunnel system that opened less than two blocks away from to Location 2. This time span does not even exist in Hilsman's mind. 

It's not clear where he picked up this confusion. Most likely he just learned thetwo events were hours apart and then forgot which came first. By way of explanation, he says the FFM and all of us "can be contradicted by following a simple timeline of the available evidence," linking to an article about the 2013 Ghouta attack. Yeah, he's confused.

Exposing Russian-Led Incident Conflation 

OK, so the conspiracy theorists messed up the timeline to push their lies, Hilsman said while doing that himself, conflating incidents year apart. Another thing he says they did, with the Russians and Syrians leading, is to conflate that fake hospital scene and the real chlorine attack just a few hours apart to suggest both had been staged. 

"Subsequent international coverage of the incident gave the impression that the panicked civilians filmed at the underground hospital were all victims of the chlorine attack, which had killed civilians at a block of flats earlier when in reality many were sheltering from conventional bombing in the chaos following the chlorine strike. This confusion has been at the center of Russian and Assad regime attempts to obfuscate guilt for the crime."

"...conspiracy theorists have since taken the surreal moment as evidence that witnesses testified that the White Helmets had staged the attack, a notion which clearly originates with the Syrian and Russian diplomats, and not the witnesses, many of whom had been spotted at the hospital as opposed to the block of flats where the attack actually occurred. As an aforementioned BBC producer mentioned, this is why Russia chose to focus on the hospital and not the block of flats where the attack actually occurred."

So Hilsman would urge you not to confuse the two, as the Russians and Syrians want you to do. He echoes the BBC's Riam Dalati, who said "no one knew what really happened at the flats apart from activists manipulating the scene there. This is why Russia focused solely on discrediting the hospital scene." It's the only part they knew much about. 

It's curious then how the little girl Masa is one of those seen at the hospital. She and her mother Amani claim to have been next door to the chlorine release (along with sister Malaz, father Diaa, and an uncle), where just 3 people out of 75 sheltering died. As reported, they suffered instant foaming, paralysis, and unconsciousness that chlorine doesn't actually cause, but were lucky enough to hear the sound from the neighboring roof (Masa grinningly recalls hearing the gas cylinder's valve open with "feeesh" sound), allowing them to break the paralysis or something. The neighbors - she thinks - could only smell it killing them horribly for probably over an hour, so had no choice but to stay inexplicably frozen and endure it (aside from at least Naser Hanan who says he heard it pop from the basement, and also managed to escape. It remains unclear what the dead did or didn't hear). 

And so Masa and kin survived while "everyone" next door died (except of course the 5+ miracle survivors on record, none of whom they bumped into?) and then, we're to believe, they sought treatment amid that staged scene Hilsman thinks happened hours later. Just as with Hassan Diab who was in no gas attack, little Masa is all wet but has no hint of redness in her eyes, even if her backpack really did reek of bleach etc. a week later.

And so these folks at least were at both scenes, allegedly - the staged one, and the disputed one - adding to the confusion the Syrians and Russians supposedly invented as the linchpin of their denials. 

On the Masa/Amani story, see a prior post on that which centered on "shelter confusion" that has been mostly resolved (it doesn't seem they claimed their own building was impacted, as it had initially read), but the post still needs updated to reflect that. The story is still highly implausible.

Side-note: Masa et al blamed falling barrel in one day's worth of interviews on April 16, then went quiet as others spoke up; clean-shaven young men claiming to have survived from Location 2 itself, after losing close family. These later witnesses did not, as far as I know, appear at that hospital scene, though one was named Naser Hanan (any relation to Dr Abu Bakr Hanan?). These would variously blame no one or even blame Jaysh al-Islam and the White Helmets for a different but implausible scenario where people lived there and died from the gas with the same instant foam, paralysis, and loss of consciousness, among other shifting, dubious or impossible details (see here). 

Ignoring all eyewitness accounts - even those at the Russian press conference, those interviewed by Robert Fisk, etc., and focusing on the physical evidence as available, I still propose a third option put well enough by a certain Canadian journalist as "the massacre of civilians by insurgents to frame Syria’s government." 

Covering for the Possible Perps 1: JaI, Narrative Kidnappers 

Jaysh al-Islam (hereafter JaI, meaning "Army of Islam," and formerly Liwa (banner of) al-Islam), a Saudi-backed extremist militia that for years dominated the Damascus suburbs, are the prime alternate suspects for the Douma massacre, as well as for the 2013 Ghouta chemical massacre. They come in for some criticism and something Hilsman seems to couch as balance.

"Zahran Alloush’s gangs, who terrorized the population, paraded Allawi hostages in cages, kidnapped opposition activists, dismantled revolutionary organizations, and used civilian hostages as slave labor to dig tunnel fortifications. ... The ruthlessness with which Jaysh al Islam had tried to seize control of narratives, even those which painted the regime in a terrible light, is hardly surprising"

Their legendary brutality and seizing of civilians on sectarian grounds and freely abusing them makes JaI prime suspects for ... staging a hospital scene "hours later," to kidnap just a narrative. To Hilsman, it doesn't make them suspects for anything worse, because he's already decided the Syrian government is to blame for dropping that chlorine cylinder on people no one held prisoner. 

Explaining further, Hilsman noted how JaI "had kidnapped activists involved with the very organizations that had documented the 2013 East Ghouta Sarin attack after all." And they presumably killed the "Douma four," as threatened by JaI founder Alloush long before the December, 2013 kidnapping JaI denied but never investigated, and considering the activists never re-appeared except as traces within JaI prisons. 

And the "Violations Documentation Center" (VDC) they ran from Douma didn't even find the truth of the Ghouta incident (or didn't report it). It was some researchers including myself who earlier this year found - by a unique combination of rocket ballistics and video evidence - Jaysh al-Islam or allies carried out that sarin rocket attack from a spot only they could access. This adds to prior findings for a managed massacre; for example, the hundreds of victims seen don't appear to have died from sarin as alleged, and at least one who survived a gassing, probably with Carbon Monoxide, had his throat cut in between videos at an insurgent-run "clinic" in Kafr Batna, with clear signs the site's basement was used as a gas chamber to kill some 85+ people there. 

Hilsman, among others, has tried weakly to deny this latest evidence, without finding any significant errors or alternate explanations. (his bit: I was a "ghoul" collaborating with an "Israeli tech firm" and we were wrong, obviously)

Consider also how days after Douma, as part of the surrender deal, Jaysh al-Islam released their civilian captives who remained alive, and it was only about 200 of them; some 3,000 were just unaccounted for, quite possibly killed to stage events like the Ghouta and Douma chemical massacres. And note that some 1/3 or more of the identified victims in Douma are probably related by blood or marriage to a prominent opponent of JaI, Mohammad Dyab Bakryieh, founder of the Douma Martyr's Brigade that would launch a failed rebellion against JaI in 2015. 

Two extremist, sectarian "civil society leaders" in Douma - Abu Omar Burkhush and "Abu Azzoun" - helped manage the largest collection of bodies in the 2013 massacre (top images below), using dead babies to damn the "Nusayri (Alawite) regime." It seems they did the same in 2018; the two still swore in a 2019 interview with Turkish TRT World that the attack used sarin and actually killed 187 people, whom they personally helped recover from "bunkers." Oddly, early reports had running totals that stopped about the same - 180-200 killed by the sarin attack, before reverting with poor explanation to "more than" a confirmed 42, later decided as 43. These two guys seem to know what they're talking about. But where were the other 144 people killed, and where was that "sarin" released and how? They probably know this as well, but don't say.  

So why in 2018 would these monsters with Jaysh al-Islam stage a scene relating to the Douma chemical massacre but NOT arrange the whole false-flag massacre (if there were one)? They were perhaps the only party capable of that, and there's much evidence suggesting it happened; the apparent staging of bodies at Location 2, the concealment of their true manner and place of death, peripheral staging like the hospital scene, etc. And finally, note that JaI-affiliated activists reportedly controlled the scene of Location 2, preventing anyone else from accessing it or witnessing their manipulations. The mentioned VDC reported on April 9 "Jaish Al-Islam also made it difficult to hold independent investigation and documentation of the site yesterday and tried to bar witnesses from documenting and photographing any evidence." 

Dalati: "I can tell you that Jaysh al-Islam ruled Douma with an iron fist. They coopted activists, doctors and humanitarians with fear and intimidation." They also used the more enduring method of actual ideological sympathy - maybe that's why so few have spoken up even after JaI's threats grew less credible.

Covering for the Perps 2: Exposing the Lie of Body Planting

"Over 40 bodies were found in a single block of flats" as Hilsman puts it. It was reported as 35, with 34 seen and one pregnant, and for an accepted 43 deaths, some 8-9 died in another location no one has ever specified. Otherwise, so far so good.

Some have noted the various clues of staging here besides the hospital, including: several victims are seen to have no dust on their feet from walking to these spots - those outside include one on a stretcher, one seemingly set to be carried in when the work was halted, 2 others laid as if ready (or do you read all that backwards, with bodies carried out dustless feet first?) - those inside are often piled or strangely posed near entrances or the stairs only to the second floor, as if they were too heavy to carry further - a door had to be taken off its hinges for the victims to gain desperate access to a room just inches above the street-level gas they had just run BACK inside to escape (and they're educated to get above such gas, as Hilsman has emphasized, not to stay level with it and just lay there) ... and around the corner from that door, bodies piled on a single rug someone had dragged to the shower, where the corpses all had their faces and hair washed, long after death and shortly before images were allowed. Someone left wet dingy rags and a removed respirator, as if to protect from fumes the people put off. Etc. 

Hisman has a partial answer in "a detail which has been erroneously seized upon by conspiracy theorists who claim the moving of bodies was proof of the bodies having been planted outright." As he claims with no explanation, corpses were moved around some only because of "the first responders on the scene who checked the corpses for signs of life," and not for any nefarious reason. 

Their faces were and hair were washed to check for signs of life? This girl (below) was being checked for signs of life around 1 am by this White Helmets member, was incidentally photographed, striking a poignant note, and was then left atop the pile of bodies at that rescuer's feet? (victim code: G10 - see mapping and analysis)

This older girl was moved half a flight of stairs down to check for signs of life? This new position was seen in 2 new videos released just this year (see here), claiming to show the 2013 Ghouta attack, but showing later scenes of the 2018 one, in the early morning around dawn, it seems. 

Here she's next to another girl just above the second floor, matching better with Khaled Abu Jafaar's prior claim of carrying a girl under each arm when he collapsed on his third dash down the stairs (Al-Jazeera). But she was still on the landing at 10 PM, some 2.5 hours after the alleged attack. (victim codes: G1, G2)

This woman's wedding ring was stolen as they checked for signs of life? (deduced as W1, face left-side-down in brown fluid next to similar-looking W2, as seen earlier w/ring vs. flat, brown face seen later, moved from empty original spot onto a rug a feet away, posed in a near-hug with a relocated G5, and with no ring)

So there are the noted clues for planting, several bodies moved between videos, photo ops and some valuables taken, and ... The head of a team of German toxicology experts consulted by the OPCW's FFM in June, 2018, was more circumspect than the non-expert Mr. Hilsman. As the meeting summary put it, upon seeing imagery of those killed, the chief expert felt they COULD have died in a real chemical attack OR, seeing how that made little sense with just the chlorine found, the body array could be a "propaganda exercise." In the opinion of one employee who had been at the meeting and heard the fuller explanation, that suspicion was "fueled by" by how the deaths "do not match chlorine rather than corpses arranged for propaganda purposes." This chief expert theorized a possible conspiracy, citing the visual evidence and his own expert analysis, as sought by the OPCW. This isn't some Russian-inspired internet troll twisting Dalati's words. 

https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/document/actual_toxicology_meeting_redacted/

https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/document/correctly_redacted_emails_re_toxicology_minutes/

OPCW response: the FFM leadership erased that expert consultation from their process and replaced it with another one months later, which also failed to link chlorine to the deaths, but probably did so differently, with less conspiracy theorizing, and maybe with strategically narrow lines of questioning, etc. No details have been clarified. Hilsman ignorantly endorses all this, and supports that with a baseless assumption; the insurgents and thair allies didn't stage any corpse propaganda... except a little bit. Mainly, they were just hoping there was still someone they could save. They didn't kill anyone, or help to launder such.

Side-note: Having found no one alive, Hilsman writes, the would-be rescuers "left the cameras rolling as they opened the eyes of some of the victims to record the burning of their corneas," which would result from chlorine exposure. But this scene was filmed the next morning outside the underground hospital, FWIW, alongside that "last hug" image. And they failed to show any corneal burning, which always involves redness (as was noted above as lacking at the staged hospital scene). These people just show postmortem clouding of the sclera and zero redness, which is odd considering the other signs of caustic gas exposure and resultant pulmonary edema. It doesn't seem the German experts brought this up, but it's true, maybe too obvious to see. This oddity seems related to the very unusual pattern of yellow-brown staining and/or irritation seen on the faces of most or all the visible fatalities (and on none of the alleged survivors) that excludes the eyes in a perfectly goggle-shaped zone. This weird discoloration in turn probably explains the unusual - and failed - efforts to wash those stains off their faces before the video propaganda commenced. For a long time now I've had more to say on this aspect, and that remains so now. Don't stay tuned, but be ready to tune back in for that.

Monitor on Massacre Marketing: Douma's Mask of Death, part 1 (libyancivilwar.blogspot.com)

Conclusion: No Rogue Precog 

So Hilsman ... disagrees with the German toxicologists consulted by the FFM, with the FFM's original engineering sub-team, and the FFM's timeline of events, though he'll be correcting the last point. And feels the conspiracy theorists should defer as he does to the FFM investigation only as it came out in the end - he agrees with OPCW leadership and the governments corrupting it, including France and the US (the two he identifies most with), the UK, Israel and Saudi Arabia, and also with Jaysh al-Islam - if not on every detail each has offered. 

He poses as "rogue precog" - I think - for defying early US calls for an Assad chlorine-sarin attack, with an early guess that it was an Assad chlorine attack with no sarin, rather than an insurgent massacre covered by a staged/fabricated sarin-then-chlorine attack. He issued that call April 11, just a week after the incident - even before the sarin claims had completely fallen apart (link, and see below). As a recent tweet to me shows, he's still proud of being "right when the US government was lying to the press" - along with the White Helmets and others Hilsman would never accuse of lying - and he's still a bit too eager to prove that he "doesn’t give a shit what the US gov thinks." The fairly random reasoning behind his lucky guess was explained on TYT (something about hardened bunkers etc. made it obvious to him, tactically - I'd have to review to clarify that). Others like former US Secret Service man Dan Kaszeta already had some cause to back off sarin claims, and may have informed Patrick's views (see below). April 12 Hilsman said the same to HRW's Ken Roth, adding "I'm not qualified to make that determination but this is what independent exerts [sic] are hinting at." 

Coincidentally, the sarin claims were falling apart for everyone, and soon unspecified US officials came to the Hague, on the 4th of July, and told OPCW they were investigating an Assad chlorine attack (see below), against much of the evidence they had gathered up to then. Soon the OPCW reformed its probe and more easily found what US officials suggested, "confirming" Hilsman and his bit of supposed anti-establishment psychic inference.

A real rogue precog might, for example, see Obama issue his "red line" threat/offer on August 20, 2012, or miss that and notice him repeating it on December 3, and then start watching for false flag allegations of Assad CW use, and see them appear starting 3 days later. That would be me, over here. But Pat came up with the phrase. It's neat.

Here as before, Patrick Hilsman promotes hostile propaganda to underpin unjust war, sanctions, etc. while posing as pro-truth and anti-war. He claims to be pro-science while failing to get it - on this front anyway - and second-guessing everyone who does get it. He claims to be anti-authority while constantly appealing to authority and generally conforming to it. He signals liberal virtues while assisting the world's most powerful bloc of nations and interests to weaken or eliminate opposition, crush dissent and impose their global profit and control agenda as uniformly as possible. He's a type we know all too well, and one worth knowing a bit better.  

Why the OPCW Left Evidence Buried in Douma

Douma Chemical Massacre - Victim Analysis -  Why the OPCW Left Evidence Buried in Douma

November 29, 2021

last edits 11/30

On 1 March 2019, the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission (FFM)'s final report on the Douma incident, S/1731 (PDF link), was released . Its conclusions included that there were "reasonable grounds" to believe chlorine gas had been used in Douma on April 4, 2018 in an attack by Syrian military, "which witnesses said killed 43 people." 

This is generally read as saying the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) found proof the Syrian government dropped chlorine on Douma, actually causing the deaths of those 43 people. But there was never proof that it was an attack as opposed to the staged incident it seemed, and no plausible explanation has ever been offered as to how that chlorine could have killed those people as reported. They might well have been murdered in another way and arranged at the scene, just like the chlorine cylinder seemingly was. 

The final report did seek the advice of at least two sets of forensic toxicologists, trying to secure that link. But the experts refused to correlate the sudden immobilization or other observed signs and were unable to link the deaths to any specific chemical. The report tries - at least in spots - to make it sound like this was because the FFM was unable to examine the bodies of the deceased. Paragraph 2.11 states: "with the absence of biomedical samples from the dead bodies or any autopsy records, it is not currently possible to precisely link the cause of the signs and symptoms to a specific chemical." 2.10 explains: "the team did not have direct access to examine dead bodies, as it could not enter Douma until two weeks after the incident (see paragraph 2.2), by which time the bodies had been buried." And once they're under the dirt, apparently, it's just too late.

Exhuming the bodies isn't mentioned as an option there, but it was mentioned elsewhere in the report, and it was a possibility that was much talked about at the time. A month after the alleged attack, on 3 May, departing OPCW Director-General Ahmet Uzumcu told the Financial Times they were looking into "ways to exhume and take some biomedical samples," to see if the suspected sarin could be confirmed. "It is a very sensitive process," Uzumcu said in the widely-reported interview. "That's why they are very cautious. Although our experts have been able to attend some autopsies in the past, this is going to be the first time we have exhumed bodies."  (via Taipei Times)

The OPCW had a chance to examine fatalities following on the Ghouta alleged attack in 2013 killed an "estimated" 1,429 people, but for dubious reason they had opted not to do it. UN disarmament chief Angela Kane was involved and spoke to this decision in an interview on RT: “there were so many victims who are still alive that there was really no need to exhume bodies.” Her bizarre and completely incorrect reasoning: “a dead body can’t tell how the person dies … a living person can tell you that.” (RT October 3, 2013. ‘No sarin detected in West Ghouta environment, only in human samples' - UN's Angela Kane. RT video, published October 3, 2013. (time-stamp: 12:29) https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x16udmn - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcfIj6WLqRk ) 

And so, in 2013, the OPCW chose to extrapolate from insurgent-screened alleged survivors who claimed to be relatives of the dead. Many of these did test positive for sarin, but at what seems to be incongruously low levels, and their high rate of positives from Moadamiya wound up looking odd next to the almost total lack of sarin returns in the environment there. It seems likely these stand-ins had volunteered for token doses. Since 2004, tests can show sarin presence at concentrations as low as 5 picograms per milliliter of blood which - by my efforts to estimate it - is about 0.002% or 2/100,000 of a fatal dose at most - probably too little to even feel. And it seems the OPCW eschewed quantitative testing for that, just looking for presence at any level, allowing for such easy fakery. (See Sarin-faking in Syria)

As for the real reason to avoid confirmation: they might have been afraid of what they would find. As noted right away by Dr. Denis O'Brien, the fatalities in Ghouta did not appear to have died from sarin at all, especially the unusually pink ones in Kafr Batna, and especially the one whose neck the insurgents had to cut to finish the job. But without really checking, the OPCW decided sarin was to blame for, and that it came from the rockets widely believed to be fired by the Syrian military. (that belief has pretty well proven incorrect.)

From there, OPCW's second effort to even investigate on the ground in 2014 ended in disaster, but a fortunate one for the blaming of Damascus. A team from the newly-minted FFM set out to investigate some alleged chlorine attacks in Hama, but they were also given the locations where  insurgent allegedly assembled the "barrel bombs" and stored the chlorine associated with the claims. Perhaps learning of that, insurgents attacked and arrested the FFM team en route - maybe as "spies for Assad" - before sending them back to Damascus empty-handed. Soon a plan was arranged where the FFM would stay out of rebel areas and far away from any CW facilities they ran, and let insurgents and their closer allies like the "White Helmets" handle evidence collection for such investigation.

That was  always a gross violation of OPCW protocols. But after the attack and a "loss of trust," what choice was there but to go all-out trusting them or else sit out the whole regime-blaming exercise? That policy produced consistent results implicating the government time and again, mainly based on crediting any claims of aircraft involvement, however grounded they were in the evidence. This held until 2018 in Douma, where the establishment of government control made direct on-site examination of an alleged government attack possible, for the first time in nearly five years. Interestingly, this is where the blame machine ran into its biggest problems.

Uzumcu bragged this was "going to be the first time" bodies were exhumed and studied, but it hadn't been done yet by the 6 July Interim Report (S/1645/2018). All it said on the subject was the intention "was communicated to the Syrian Arab Republic" (some details given) and that "preliminary preparations were undertaken by the Secretariat for this eventuality." There was no word on progress, and three months after the event it was getting very late. 

In fact this heralded exhumation was never done and the reasons for that remain muddled. Three extremely different reasons have been proposed: 

1) Assad blocked the OPCW from finding the truth of his guilt

2) experts advised there was nothing to find, and so the FFM chose not to look 

3) the OPCW's investigators wanted to avoid an unacceptable and unclear "risk" related to reason 2 but predating it, perhaps concerned there was evidence of insurgent guilt they would rather not see.

Reason 1: Assad Kept OPCW From Finding the Evidence

It was on 26 April the OPCW communicated its interest in exhuming bodies, with a "note verbale NV/ODG/214827/18." On 3 May we heard those comments regarding that plan, and then the next day came the Syrian reply. Ten months later the final report would explain:

"The Syrian Arab Republic replied in Note Verbale No. 45 on 4 May 2018 and enumerated the conditions to be met in order to conduct the exhumation. With due consideration of the time elapsed since the alleged incident, the possibility was eventually not explored any further."

"Eventually" it had become too far out to bother. But the editing at least makes it sound like Damascus' conditions - which are never specified - had a part in this, perhaps in stalling it so long. In fact the Syrian government complained about this in another note verbale of 11 March, 2019, question 7:

"Paragraph 7.8 implicitly blames the Syrian Arab Republic for the fact that the bodies were not exhumed from their graves. The Technical Secretariat Sent Note Verbale NV/ODG/214827/18, dated 26 April 2018 and the Syrian Arab Republic replied, through Note Verbale 45, dated 4 May 2018, that it would continue to cooperate with the FFM and it was ready to provide all that is necessary to facilitate the work. However, the issue of exhumation is particularly sensitive and requires numerous procedures involving various entities (judicial, religious, medical). The Technical Secretariat, however, did not follow up on this issue with the Syrian National Authority, as mentioned in the same paragraph." 

The OPCW response: "No blame was understood or implied by the FFM in paragraph 7.8 of the report." Some people might read it that way, but they insist that wasn't their intention. (Source: S/1755/2019, 21 May 2019, Annex 1 pp 6-7 PDF link )

One especially vocal and diehard adherent to this reading is Scott Lucas, an English professor of American Studies and an affiliate of Jaish al-Islam, the Saudi-backed militants who are the prime alternate suspects for the Douma massacre.  Prof. Lucas has said "one of privileges of this job is meeting a lot of wonderful people on ground who, at risk to themselves, want to get story out. So that is why I have "facts", in and beyond OPCW report." (5/30/19) For example, as he posted on his EA Worldview page "Assad forces are digging up graves in a search for the bodies of victims, hoping to remove them before the OPCW inspectors can test for chemical exposure" - or at least that was claimed by "Mohammed Alloush, a senior official of the rebel faction Jaish al-Islam" (he was JAI's  political leader and a relative of founder Zahran Alloush) 

Along with representatives of US, UK, and France, the OPCW, and the United Nations, professor Lucas has suggested Syria and Russia had stalled the Douma probe in order to erase signs of sarin. The very possibility of that is debatable, and the only stalling anyone can identify was by the UN's security agency UNDSS, whose recon team was rushed into a grenade attack by militants, which stalled things a bit further (Monitor on Massacre Marketing: Swept Under the Rug, Part 1 and part 2 ) Lucas, for his part, has said "Evidence of an attack couldn't be completely scrubbed, but a lot of it could be put beyond inspectors, e.g., the bodies of the victims." (1/2/20 ) 

Lucas' extremist-linked sources have him unusually prone to believing sarin or similar was also involved: Early on he was firm: "From the multi-sources I have - Doctors, activists, Citizen Journalists - there was a stronger agent used, This was not just chlorine used in Douma." (video) He suggests this agent's total absence from the scene is because it was "scrubbed" away, and there was a similar effort to hide clues in those bodies. And while he's since accepted that chlorine alone could explain the deaths, at least with the help of a "funnel effect," as recently as September 6 (2021) he still suggests there was more to it that remains hidden: "So why were witnesses still speaking of "stronger agent" than chlorine in #Douma attack almost 3 weeks later? Because 43 victims had to buried quickly as #Russia-regime occupied city. So no one could verify actual agent." 

There was an effort to give the OPCW the location of the mass grave containing the bodies, but as Lucas explains, "Russia-regime control meant no way round talks w Damascus." (4/30/19) Those talks led to the airing of conditions, and "#Assad regime's blocking of exhumations came thru "conditions" which eventually brought OPCW withdrawal of attempt --- you can track this fm early May in other public sources." (4/30/19) This refers to the statements of intent followed immediately with the conditions and then by no exhumation, along with some "open-source" insinuations as to cause and effect. And so, he says, "OPCW never obtained “authorization” from #Assad regime to exhume bodies" (4/30/19) 

When the statement "No blame was understood or implied by the FFM"  was mentioned by Dr. Piers Robinson and Sander Hildenbrandt, Lucas replied "That's not what #OPCW final report on #Douma said so don't misrepresent it" and "That's very diplomatic language by OPCW about why they didn't go --- they refused #Assad regime conditions over further pursuit of bodies." Professor Lucas noted that the report sure read as blaming Damascus, and should be read that way, whatever they told the Syrians with tender diplomacy. Still no one can specify what these conditions were, but it's suggested they were so extreme they forced the OPCW to again abandon the study of actual fatalities in an alleged CW attack in Syria. 

And finally, Lucas asserts this is exactly why the OPCW could not prove that chlorine immobilized then killed all those people: "The reason why final #OPCW FFM report does not make definitive conclusion re chlorine is because inspectors were unable to examine bodies of victims." (12/20/19) He claims that was Assad's fault, and that the OPCW blames him for it, albeit with "diplomatic" language. And that alone suggests government guilt; after all, why block access if there's nothing to hide? It would seem like the bodies held the proof, and Assad just couldn't risk it being found. 

Reason 2: OPCW Told There Was No Evidence TO Find

Former Guardian Middle East editor Brian Whitaker was a bit less rabid in addressing the issue of exhumation in his recent book, made available at his Al-Bab website: "The Syrians didn’t refuse but their reply was discouraging – it raised legal and other complications." (DENYING THE OBVIOUS: chapter 13 | al-bab.com)

 

Unlike Prof. Lucas, Whitaker doesn't claim these conditions were the reason for the OPCW's failure to examine the remains of those killed. As he writes in Denying the Obvious, there were initial plans to that effect, but "as time went on the OPCW began to have doubts about pursuing their request." And so "[t]wo months after the events in Douma, OPCW staff sought advice from a group of toxicologists in Germany" and this, Whitaker asserts, is where they got the idea to not bother digging up the bodies. The OPCW stopped themselves from looking, he argues, because there was simply no point to it. And they learned this on a trip to Germany in June.

This June 6 meeting has been the issue of some controversy. In the end, two groups of toxicology experts were consulted for the FFM's investigation. One set in September and October, 5-6 months after the incident, was cited in the final report in 2019, while this earlier visit in June was omitted from all public sources until the minutes of the meeting were leaked later in 2019. (WikiLeaks - actual_toxicology_meeting_redacted and see also my post from then: Douma Toxicology: Erasing-and-replacing the Correct Answers)

Just the other day, Aaron Maté at the Gray Zone published an e-mail by OPCW whistleblower Brendan Whelan to then-former colleagues at the OPCW protesting how that meeting was erased from the record, and urging them to help elevate these concerns so they might be addressed. In part, Whelan said: "I believe it is our professional and moral obligation to ensure the DG appreciates the gravity of the matter. There may be a justified reason for the omission – though I can’t imagine what. At a minimum a satisfactory explanation has to be provided." This was on August 23, 2019 and it doesn't seem to have been much help. Soon the minutes were leaked so the public could help raise the issue instead and, as the article notes, the OPCW started a process of investigation and punishments against Whelan. 

It's worth noting Whitaker's effort to minimize this hushed-up consultation. As he explains its purpose: "[The investigators] wanted to know what information might be gleaned from exhuming the bodies and, in particular, whether this might reveal any evidence of exposure to chlorine gas." That sounds like the entire purpose. "The toxicologists advised that for a variety of reasons, including the time since burial, “there would be little use in conducting exhumations, as the chances of gathering evidence would be almost impossible.” 

Their input on the subject was sound, but that question alone hardly seems worth a whole meeting, even in-country. Exposure to a caustic gas like chlorine leaves little to no identifying chemical trace, just non-specific damage to the lungs that can be observed as consistent. See Australia study: "the absence of biomarkers and non-specific findings at autopsy complicate the diagnosis [of chlorine poisoning], particularly as environmental levels are not stable." This applies from the moment of death, but two weeks of decay couldn't help matters. 

In fact, the German experts "were unaware of any such exhumations being done in the past to provide evidence of chlorine exposure," and they saw little reason to expect otherwise in Douma. Furthermore, the lung tissue where signs would be clearest "would likely have degraded" too badly by then to say anything at all. And so, as the summary phrases it, "the highly experimental nature of of the exercise in such a public forum would represent a risk to benefit ratio that was unacceptably high." We'll return to this phrase. 

"Following that, the plan for exhumations was abandoned," Whitaker writes, and "the FFM based its decision on the toxicologists' advice." Later on, the FFM would claim "with the absence of biomedical samples from the dead bodies or any autopsy records, it is not currently possible to precisely link the cause of the signs and symptoms to a specific chemical." In fact even with these things it seems unlikely, as they privately knew. But this "inability" to access the bodies was semantically pinned on Damascus elsewhere in the report, and so they had to keep highlighting that as something that mattered. Publicly.

So... expert advice said don't bother digging up the bodies, and that's exactly why the FFM never did so. This is certainly a more grounded explanation than prof. Lucas offers or than the FFM's final report would suggest, and seems to be at least part of the real answer. But this reading does gloss over at least one important issue; exhumation might NOT have been a waste of time. 

Assuming the bodies buried are the same ones we've seen, there was probably little value in confirming the non-specific lung damage behind the pulmonary edema that was already evident in the images. An April, 2019 briefing note of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media (WGSPM) agreed, but explained:

"...it would still have been possible to obtain DNA samples, which might have allowed victims to be identified through matching with living relatives and with each other. Other identifying information might have been obtained from clothing, items in pockets or X-rays. Establishing the identity of the victims would have been critical in determining whether those who came forward to give interviews reporting that their relatives had died at Location 2 were telling the truth."

Noting bodies should be stripped, washed, and specially wrapped prior to burial - and some were seen so wrapped - the pockets clues would be unlikely (and of dubious value to begin with). But the rest all held some promise of shedding light on the mysterious circumstances of their deaths. I'll go into this in a little more detail below under reason 3, OPCW risk avoidance. 

Whitaker sums up the Working Group's thrust fairly enough before trying to rebut it (bolding mine): 

"Among those who defend the Assad regime against accusations of using chemical weapons, the quasi-academic Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media has previously criticised the OPCW for its "failure to proceed with exhumations". The Working Group suggests the bodies photographed in Douma were not local residents killed by the regime in a chemical attack but captives killed by rebels in a "managed massacre". It implies the OPCW didn't exhume them for fear of what might be revealed."

"However, the leaked minutes of the June meeting offer a far more straightforward explanation: that the FFM based its decision on the toxicologists' advice." 

They don't seem to have addressed DNA identification, or any other aspect aside from that of chemical exposure. Despite the limits, much could have been learned from a look at the fatalities. But the FFM tossed these clues aside without adequate explanation. There must be a reason, and we can guess it was "fear of what might be revealed."

Whitaker suggests exhumation was the only question raised in the June meeting, specifying "it appeared not to have been regarded as a full-scale “expert consultation” about the likely cause of deaths." This suggests it was always the plan to look into that central question only in September and October, at least 5 months after the incident. This is similar to the engineering study of how the cylinders came to be where they were seen, another important question officially un-addressed until October-November, but secretly addressed months before with an inconvenient and omitted engineering report. As such, the "on-going" work in these two areas that was mentioned in the public interim report of July (PDF) was allegedly still months away from even beginning. Or perhaps the reasonably-timed first tries had failed to produce the results they wanted.

Whitaker is also clear that the value of exhumation is what the FFM "wanted to know" in June. Maybe it was not the only thing they asked about, but "in particular" it was the meeting's "most immediate purpose" or (in an earlier piece) it was "the first topic raised" in Germany. Their meeting, he wrote, "lasted about an hour and after the discussion of exhumations it turned" - as conversations sometimes wander off course - "to the question of possible chlorine use" and whether it even could explain the observed fatalities. The experts offered a resounding NO. In fact, after seeing numerous images "the experts were also of the opinion that it was highly unlikely that victims would have gathered in piles at the centre of the respective apartments at such a short distance from an escape" to fresh air, and then just lay there and die, if they had simply been exposed to chlorine. Also: 

In the opinion of one employee who had been at the meeting and heard the fuller explanation, that suspicion was "fueled by" by how the deaths "do not match chlorine rather than corpses arranged for propaganda purposes." (WikiLeaks - correctly_redacted_emails_re_toxicology_minutes) 

These are notably astute observations, but luckily - as Whitaker tells it - those questions weren't really raised or relevant at the moment. A "full-scale “expert consultation” about the likely cause of deaths" was only slated for a few months later. These experts did chime in the point, but only the later opinions were actually sought and actually mattered.

However, it turns out cause of death was something they wanted to know already. The meeting minutes start by explaining "The purpose of the visit was two-fold:

1. To solicit expert advice on the value of exhuming suspected victims...

2. To elicit expert opinions from the forensic toxicologists regarding the observed and reported symptoms of the alleged victims ...more specifically ... whether the symptoms observed in victims were consistent with exposure to chlorine ..."

The chief expert's "propaganda exercise" comments were in response to this less "particular," less "immediate" "second item" of discussion. Furthermore, as related in the summary, "the team gathered after the meeting" and it was "agreed by all present that the key "take-away message" from the meeting" (my bolding) "was that the symptoms observed were inconsistent with exposure to chlorine..." (underlined in original). The uselessness of exhuming bodies was also discussed, but it wasn't the only subject, nor even the "key" one. 

It remains odd how no one at the time took down a record of this official meeting that would later also go unmentioned, and it was down to whistleblower Whelan to assemble one from memory. But this belated record was reviewed by others (e-mails seen - Wikileaks) and none of this was contested. Some wording was tweaked, and then the expert advice was included in the draft interim report: 

"The rapid, and in some reported cases, immediate onset of frothing described by victims is not considered consistent with exposure to chlorine-based choking or blood agents. The opinion of a number of toxicologists, specialists in chemical-weapons-related intoxication supported this assessment."

...

"It should be expected that on encountering the irritant gas, victims would instinctively have retreated and exited the building, which was within a few metres away." ... etc.  (source: WikiLeaks - FirstdraftInterimReport)

Brian Whitaker had to realize the June meeting was in fact an “expert consultation” about cause of death. Note how he had to qualify his disputation by saying that "it appeared not to have been regarded as a full-scale" one - whatever that means. 

The offered opinions were actually sought, but then rejected and withheld from the public record. The draft interim report's timeline stops on June 3, just before this meeting, but it was probably meant to be updated to note the source of several cited points. Then the public interim report in July dropped all of that and skipped the timeline, and said only that work on toxicology was "on-going," like "in progress." But if so, the first part of it was never published; it was totally replaced in the final report with the second set of toxicologists, and the consultation in Germany is not on the final report's updated timeline of activities or noted anywhere therein. 

The final report should reflect the preferred toxicologists' input, but they're not cited with any specifics for or against chlorine death, just mentioned as being consulted. The report says "[A]n agent capable of  quickly killing or immobilising" was suspected, but chlorine is not particularly capable of that. A string of observed and reported symptoms were found mostly inconsistent with chlorine, with a few being debatable and/or extremely vague. Therefore, " determination of the aetiology from these observations can be related to a wide scope of chemicals" but "it is currently not possible to precisely link the cause of the signs and symptoms to a specific chemical" - not even the only possibly relevant one they had found at the site. 

Whitaker writes "Alex’s supporters preferred the version set out in Whelan’s minutes of the June meeting and accused the OPCW of cherry-picking – listening to some toxicologists while ignoring others." ("Alex" apparently was Whelan, under a pseudonym Whitaker helped blow by doxxing this whistleblower.) But he offers no effective rebuttal; they clearly did pick one set and made the other vanish. The one they picked was a relative cherry compared to what they heard in Germany, although it seems far from ideal for their purposes (but we can guess the preferred set of experts refrained from theorizing about a staged "propaganda exercise" at least).

The FFM final report concludes it's "reasonable" to think a chlorine cylinder "impacted" the apartment building and that chlorine alone caused these deaths. But even with all this effort, they couldn't link it to any of the specific details OF those deaths. Maybe this is "why final #OPCW FFM report does not make definitive conclusion re chlorine." Even the B team wouldn't clearly say that, and they didn't want to drag it out looking for a C team. 

So ... "key" message aside, Whitaker credits the ignored German experts with the FFM's decision to leave the bodies out of the investigation. He says their reasoning was "straightforward," but if so, why did the FFM never publicly mention its basis, in fact ignoring or editing out all reference to the meeting it came from? And why did they instead lead people to read that Syria's "discouraging" but unspecified conditions were to blame? (and that was indeed implied)

While this all reflects a real aspect of the investigation, it may not be their full, true, or original reason.

Reason 3) OPCW "Risk" Avoidance

As we eventually learned, whistleblower Whelan was the main one drafting the FFM's interim report, which at one point cited a third reason never mentioned by OPCW leadership or their helpers in the media, like Lucas and Whitaker. By this, the decision to leave bodies unexamined hinged on the chemical analysis received two weeks before that Germany meeting and a resultant ... you could say "fear of what might be revealed." 

On 22 May,  the first laboratory results were received by the FFM team, and "no nerve agents or their decomposition products were detected" among them, just chlorine, a basic irritant or caustic agent. There should be nothing much to confirm, and this raised the question if that even could explain the deaths, and those are the two things they asked about in Germany. The draft report, circulating sometime in June, apparently after the Germany meeting, includes the same passage we've seen about intent to exhume, here as paragraph 6.8, followed by a second paragraph that was cut out of the public report, giving some follow-up we weren't supposed to see.

It's worth noting how Brendan Whelan primarily drafted this, perhaps as he was already forming his more "activist" views. As such, we can't be sure this is just what the FFM would otherwise be planning to say publicly. A passage like this can't show anyone's true and secret thinking, but this one... might include some "snark" or reveal more than usual. Otherwise, let's take it as what the interim report was planning to say. 

Here paragraph 6.9 says "the plans for exhumations were halted" as or because "proceeding with the exhumations presented a risk to benefit ration [sic] that was no longer acceptable." This was when they got back the samples in late May - NOT after hearing Assad's impossible "conditions" in early May, NOR after consulting with experts on June 6, as Brian Whitaker's book argues. 

The wording here does clearly recall the advice from the German exerts; as put in the summarized minutes, "the highly experimental nature" of digging for chlorine clues 2 months on "would represent a risk to benefit ratio that was unacceptably high." But it's not clear if that was the experts' own wording added to the pre-existing case against exhumation. It may also be an idea the Fact-Finding Mission had formed two weeks earlier, maybe tacked onto a prior consultation over cause of death, and the experts were just seen as confirming it. But either way, when the question was put to them, it may have been to secure a public reason for a decision the FFM had already made, perhaps for other reasons. 

It's not immediately clear what "risk" is referred to here. Again, no specific chemical signs were expected, which speaks to lacking the kind of "benefit" they had hoped for with sarin returns. And the same lack of specifics might be read by some as a lack of evidence that should exist, or as evidence against a chemical release. Although a solid case could still be made based on all evidence combined, a risk of confusion would be raised. The bit about it all being in "such a public forum" supports that.

Exhumation takes work and raises complications, but aside from misreading, it shouldn't pose any legitimate risk, although a few illegitimate kinds are possible. Consider that chlorine could hardly explain the deaths anyway, as the FFM had clarified by the same experts in Germany. The value of confirming something that doesn't even help the case might be low, and in fact it might be better left unconfirmed, to leave possibilities open. As Aaron Maté recently reported: 

"When the original report was being finalized, there were still dozens of samples remaining to be analyzed. Accordingly, the inspectors left it open that further analysis could in theory turn up new evidence and hypothesized that: "a. The victims were exposed to another highly toxic chemical agent that gave rise to the symptoms observed and has so far gone undetected." 

"This passage — with its mention of the toxicologists’ assessment and a hypothesis leaving open the possibility of a staged incident — was never published by the OPCW. And the team would never get the chance to continue this critical area of investigation."

Final lab results still showing no nerve agents at the scene would clarify that point only in February, 2019, allowing the final report in March. But until then hope was held out; in June, the toxicology minutes have team leader Sami Barrek pursuing this line of inquiry with little effect

Maybe the OPCW's investigation leaders didn't want to to risk their wiggle-room to hypothesize different agents to blame Syria with. Ruling that out with autopsies would end it. And then if it was found the victims died from sarin or similar after all - when environment samples didn't show the same thing - it could mean site-scrubbing if that were possible, OR probably that those Syrian people died somewhere else that the OPCW's insurgent partners were hiding. 

Or they might have found some contradictory clue as to how the victims died, like that they weren't gassed at all. The draft report had mentioned a possibility that "The fatalities resulted from a non-chemical-related incident," suggesting the scene was staged with corpses from elsewhere. And again there was the risk of finding by DNA that the victims were not the people claimed. It could even be shown that they specifically were other people last seen being kidnapped by the Jaysh al-Islam militants occupying Douma and Eastern Ghouta at large. And the search might have found signs of bondage during the gassing, or some other clues of how they died the OPCW leadership and its sponsors didn't want to risk seeing. 

When there can be no good answer worth proceeding on, what's the motive to find which bad answer is true? Especially if one is able to use the flexibility of ignorance to further one's agenda? The course the OPCW's investigators chose has left the situation mysterious and malleable for the Lucasses and Whitakers of the world, and that may be the main reason they left that evidence buried in Douma.

Conclusion

In summary, the clinicopathologic evidence was seen as presenting a stated "risk," and perhaps other secret risks, which the OPCW's Fact-Finding Mission wanted to avoid. The nature of that is still unclear, and may be innocent, as Brian Whitaker proposes; they risked finding nothing. But it seems the decision to leave the fatalities unexamined was internal to the OPCW and driven by a desire to actually avoid some of the evidence. 

This is what the WGSPM briefing note had suggested, and as it still seems was the case with Ghouta, as well as with all the incidents in between where the OPCW allowed the likely perpetrators to handle much of the investigation. Such avoidance would be in line with suppression or omission of engineering, toxicological, and other evidence that complicated the politically convenient findings for Syrian guilt. 

And whatever the true reason for neglecting this evidence, OPCW leadership saw fit to put forth unfounded suggestions of other reasons that would themselves implicate the government side. Altogether this suggests - as the global public is finally coming to realize - this corrupted organization's intent was never to ascertain the truth, but just to further the dirty information war against Syria on behalf of the corrupting powers that have seized it.

More Clues from Douma's Location 2

Douma Chemical Massacre: Victims Analysis: More Clues from Douma's Location 2

November 18, 2021

(incomplete)

We'll start with two newly published videos of the 2018 Douma chemical massacre, but both describing the 2013 Ghouta chemical massacre, and released on or near that anniversary. 

Aug 21, Youtube, 6:27: فيديو يعرض لاول مرة عن مجزرة الكيماوي في الغوطة كي لا ننسى جرائم هذا النظام المجرم - YouTube ("A video showing for the first time about the chemical massacre in Ghouta so that we do not forget the crimes of this criminal regime" - next is an answer to getting them mixed-up) posted by يا طوبى للشام ( O Blessed is the Sham (Syria) ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INlUB2A9Jz0

Aug. 23, Twitter, 0:45: M HABIB on Twitter: "Le massacre de la Ghouta Nouvelle vidéo, nouveau document poignant sur les victimes du bombardement au gaz sarin par le régime syrien à Ghouta https://t.co/oG3qfQIryj" / Twitter

They both show the pivotal "Location 2" with reported 35 fatalities. The shorter video appears nowhere else I've seen, but the long one was reposted many times on Facebook, including by "expatriate obsessions" ( هواجيس مغتربا ) and on the page friends of France 24 in Arabic, where Abu Firas Homsi blamed "Bashar Al-Buhrzi" (? = بشار البهرزي ) plus "the Persians" "the criminal Putin" and declares France 24 and the West at large "are the one who helped Iran" to make Sham (Syria), Iraq and Lebanon into "Iranian provinces," besides facilitating the chemical attack shown: "On this day ... Ten years ago (Aug. 21, 2011 ... 2 years earlier than most realize!)... the Syrian regime targeted the cities of "Zamalka, Ain Tarma, Harasta and Douma" in Eastern Ghouta and Muadamiyat al-Sham in Western Ghouta" with sarin, killing 1,461 people and causing "the injury of 9,757 people, according to Syrian Network for Human Rights." 

A 2019 report gives those numbers for all the government's alleged CW attacks combined. (Accountability Remains Absent on the Sixth Anniversary of the World’s Largest Chemical Weapons Attack Since the Chemical Weapons Convention | Syrian Network for Human Rights (sn4hr.org) (a 2020 update gives 11,212 injured, 1,510 killed in all combined) 

And BTW note how that also gives as among the dead seven "Syrian regime prisoners of war" (or "prisoners of the regime" in the report) held by the local "opposition" occupying Adra Omaliya, on September 24, 2014. It would be the deadliest alleged chlorine attack until 2018 (otherwise the maximum was six killed at once). Videos, opposition records, and timing show these were captured civilians including a father and son - never described as criminals but "prisoners of war" ... and plunder, and kidnapping. Three of these are shown dead on video - one old, one ill, one previously injured. It seems they were low-value prison-laborers killed somehow before militants fled the area the following day with all valuable possessions - like useful civilian prisoners. They're seen with bleeding holes in the left (heart) sides of their chests, and no sign of chlorine exposure (like the expected red eyes). See here.

Okay - this network of SNHR-citing and especially clueless Shami activists is interesting in itself. But the videos offer a few new details I'll focus on here, mainly sharing a revamped map of Location 2. My prior mapping was never remotely accurate, just enough to show what rooms bodies were found in ... trying to account for bodies and objects even in rooms without bodies and having more such rooms to correlate makes it start to make better, if still imperfect, sense ... I may update that with the more accurate layout.

My initial tweet on the short video's tour of floor 3 included this map, to be revised below: 

Andrew comments alerting to the longer video also noted "some kind of stretcher?" jammed into one of the doorways is probably a step ladder. I agreed with some embarrassment, and noted ( tweet 2 ) it would be about this size - modeled beneath the cylinder in the ceiling just around the corner (see improved floor 3 mapping below). That might be a simple coincidence, of course. But it might be a more relevant type of coincidence.

Timeline 

Qoppa comments on the first-discussed shorter video: "Do we hear bombing in the background (00:35, 00:40)? That would point to a time rather in the morning when bombing resumed." (Syrian Air Force generally operates only in daylight). It sounds like that to me. In fact I hear distant blasts in the first 5 seconds, closer at 0:13, closer yet at 0:19, then a short pause and more over the last seconds. That's rather active bombing - nearly constant (noting insurgent surrender was finalized after just a few hours of this final assault of April 8). By that measure, the longer video may be earlier; it's all quiet outside until 2:25, when we hear a single blast nearby, then nothing clear until a distant blast at 4:31, closer at 4:35, then more at 5:08, 5:30, 5:54, 6:00, 6:06 and 6:22. Video ends 6:27, probably just before proper sunrise. 

Furthermore: The longer video shows G10 in purple is in the later position atop the pile of bodies on the ground floor main room. So this is after the initial 10PM videos when she was in the kitchen area, and after ~1am when she was seen being moved by a White Helmet's "rescuer." But it's not so late that we see daylight inside, and early enough that G7 and G9 are still present (they're the first removed - see here).

More dead girl rearrangement: G1 at the top of the stairs is seen in both new videos in a different position than before. First seen on the landing between floors 2 and 3, she's now moved 1/2 flight of stairs down, next to G2 right above floor 2. (left: shot video. Right: long video - G1 in red, G2 stripes). For now skipping the issues of blood, causes, other positions (see if needed discussion w/Qoppa under my tweet).

These 2 with a dirty cloth nearby always seemed to be the ones described here: "By his third frantic dash down the stairs, with a wet piece of cloth over his mouth and a little girl in each arm, everything went dark for Khaled Abu Jaafar." (Al-Jazeera) He would have dropped them near each other, and then been rescued himself. This arrangement we've never seen fits that even better, side-by-side as if they were one under each of a man's arms. Did he come in after the 10PM video where recue already seemed a moot point, pick up the already dead G1 and then dashed down to just pick up G2 and pass out instantly, dropping them so G1 seems totally unmoved?  No. It seems like he just tailored his story of "frantic" rescue to this later scene. Oops. But we can guess he was there and saw this, and didn't fit his story to the (then) published videos.

More clues in the mapping

Mapping floors 1, 2 and 3 with images mainly from the new videos (others of importance added from prior images too). Labeling doors at each floor by letters, right-to-left. Seems like 2 apartments per floor, with 2C being sort of a back door to what I'll call apartment 2B. Bodies were found in apartments 1A and 2B, besides the stairwell and outside. Other clues as they come up.

First the basement, as previously mapped here - no bodies were found here, but it's said the residents were all sheltering here to start. Most shoes are seen here, and note that's plausible; shoes off at home is normal, even if it's a temporary shelter home. They might put them back on to assist in fleeing deadly gas, but who can say for sure?

Then upon smelling the descending caustic gas, they all fled upstairs - passing an open entrance right onto the street and fresher air, returning to the supposedly gas-filled ground floor and up to the 2nd floor, through any open door desperately seeking water to wash their faces, then piling up there with wet faces, not paralyzed and remaining conscious, to slowly die. They would have to take some doors off the hinges to do this, drag themselves on rugs, and somehow managed to do it without their feet touching the dusty floor of this seemingly abandoned building. 

Floor 1 (top middle images go with apartment 1A, green dot room):

The green dot room with the lone boy victim B6 was mysterious; it seemed too small to have its own north window, yet was fully lit in the morning. Apparently that's a door with a window all up the middle: it reflects the camera's light at night, at the same level the door frame reflects it, and allows the sun later.

Again, I've noted by the shower a discarded respirator (for moderate exposure to noxious gasses/fumes), dirty, damp rags, a wet, muddy floor, and noting more than before a pail seeming full of yellow-brown water ... mostly re-collected after the mysterious washing of faces and hair? Red smears on the front, or lettering? Red smears all over the sink's underside? Is that all rust stains? Did they wipe a lot of blood off someone? B3 nearby and some others were leaking edema fluids with high blood content. But mainly they exude a yellow-brown liquid, variously seen foamed up or dissolved to liquid.

The longer new video offers a new view inside in apartment 1B. Yellow-brown liquid at the entrance to the red dot room suggests someone may have been briefly planted there, leaking the usual mystery fluids, and was then moved - probably to be among those we've already seen. The fluid seems to smear around the door's corner to the couch (and that  may have been moved later to partly cover the spot), and was copious enough it then flowed back up the hall (part marked lime green). 

Buckets in the wash room across the hall were possibly used for victim washup as seen by the others, maybe causing the amount of fluid we see. There's an unusual pair of discarded shoes where no one was allegedly sheltering, and a yellow spot on the rug that's probably some clothing item (head scarf?), not a mass of that liquid (too discrete and brightly-colored)

Floor 2: 

Behind door 2C (apartment 2B's bedroom), I had noted an unclear body #6 looking like a woman in black - with better views now, that looks more like black clothing (green box). The staining along the edge, however, could mean someone was there (still is, unseen?). The supposed 35th body here remains unseen - or unborn? W5 was very pregnant. Maybe that's what they meant. 

2A is another door off its hinges, mostly unseen behind a red curtain. It's left in place at the base, but angled back against the wall inside. Inside, an area to the left is seen, with a shower and sink, two rooms with slight glimpses inside. One has a yellow object similar to the chlorine gas cylinder seen at ceiling level of the floor above this, but shorter or of an unclear overall size - just marked for reference and discussion.  

Floor 3:

... interesting new bits partly noted above. Maybe more soon.

Noting: 10PM video - only prior view of floor 3 - is totally unclear as to whether there's a stepladder in that doorway then or only later.