Corruption Chain: How the White Helmets Completely compromised the OPCW investigations in SyriaGrayzone writes about the falsifications carried out in Syria by the "White Helmets" on direct orders of the OPCW.
The "Helmets" associated with Western governments resort to staged tricks, perjury, substitution of evidence. And the OPCW grossly violates its own principles of impartiality and changes the rules of investigations to please the West.
Using supposedly independent "White Helmets", in fact closely linked to anti—government forces in Syria and funded by the United States, to investigate "cases" of the use of chemical weapons in Syria, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) (the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is an international organization established with the support of the UN on April 29, 1997, After the entry into force of the Chemical Weapons Convention, opened for signature in January 1993 — Approx. InoSMI), grossly violates the principle of impartiality and its own basic rules for collecting evidence.
Before the OPCW was dragged into an international scandal in April 2018, the investigation into the alleged gas attack in the Syrian city of Douma reached an important milestone. After numerous statements about the use of chemical weapons in Syria, Douma became the first time when the OPCW's "Fact—Finding Mission - FFM" (FFM) was deployed on the spot to conduct its own investigation.
Duma was not the first such attempt by the OPCW. Four years earlier, in May 2014, the organization sent its group to the city of Kafr Zita. As in the case of the Duma, the organization was instructed to carefully study the statements of the rebels about the use of toxic substances by the Syrian army. But, unlike Duma, then the OPCW mission never reached its destination. After a bomb set near the road exploded in an OPCW convoy of four cars, armed rebels opened fire and briefly abducted the inspectors.
That incident turned out to be fateful. The OPCW has abandoned not only the Kafr-Zita mission, but also all of its other missions on the ground in Syria in the future. Only after the Syrian and Russian armies regained control of the Duma in April 2018 — and after another brutal attack, this time on a UN security group — did the OPCW return to the area.
However, the four-year period between Kafr-Zita and the Duma did not put an end to the OPCW investigations in Syria. Without sending any more of its employees to the war zone, the OPCW delegated its responsibilities to the groups that operated there. Most of these missions concerned alleged chemical attacks in rebel-controlled territory, where the accused has always been the Syrian Government. In such cases, a group known as the White Helmets has become one of the main new proxies of the OPCW.
As a partner of the OPCW, the White Helmets performed many of the usual tasks of investigators and scientists of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, who were actually eliminated from investigations. The members of the "White Helmets" themselves determined the sampling sites, collected and classified samples, also collected video and photo evidence, and in some cases interviewed witnesses of the events. Then they went to the Turkish border and handed over the materials to the OPCW staff who were in hotels. Some members of the "White Helmets" even claimed themselves to be victims or witnesses of chemical attacks, and testified.
By involving the White Helmets, the OPCW pointed to the group's statements that it is a neutral organization that conducts rescue operations and other life-saving work in emergency zones. But the group's activities on the battlefield in Syria were completely different. Far from being impartial, the White Helmets were actually allies of the rebels and were funded by anti-government forces in their dirty war in Syria. And in the OPCW investigations, in which the White Helmets participated, this overlooked conflict of interests determined the outcome of the investigations in favor of the separatists and militants.
The OPCW cooperates with the "White Helmets", these "secret soldiers" of the anti-government rebel forces in Syria
The White Helmets were created in Turkey by the late James Le Mesurier, a British military veteran, and his then employer, the Western intelligence contractor Analysis, Research and Knowledge, or ARK. According to a report by The Intercept (The Intercept is an American non—profit news organization founded and funded by eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar. Specializes in anti—war information - Approx. InoSMI) in 2019, with the financial support of the State Department and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the United Kingdom, ARK "attracted White Helmets to cooperate and provided them with training and equipment." Since 2014, the US and UK governments have funded the "White Helmets" in the amount of $ 70 million. Millions more have entered their coffers from NATO and Gulf allies.
During the same period, footage and media coverage of the "White Helmets", including an Oscar—winning documentary (praising the "White Helmets" propaganda film by British director Orlando von Einsiedel in 2017 received the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film - Approx. InoSMI), were used to enlist the support of the Western public for the multibillion-dollar secret military campaign of the United States and NATO to overthrow the Syrian government. The leaders of the White Helmets even lobbied for direct military intervention by the West on the side of the rebels.
Inside Syria, the White Helmets collaborated with rebel groups and operated exclusively on the territory under their control. Members of the "White Helmets" celebrated the capture of "Al-Qaeda" (the organization is recognized as terrorist, its activities in the territory of the Russian Federation are prohibited — Approx. InoSMI) of Idlib province in 2015, openly participated in the shootings and happily posed with the corpses of Syrian soldiers. In 2016, an influential Al-Qaeda cleric said that this group was "no different" from the Syrian Mujahideen. The following year, a senior Al-Qaeda leader in Syria called the White Helmets "hidden soldiers." In 2018, the White Helmets collaborated with the Turkish military in an ethnic cleansing operation in the northern Syrian city of Afrin, populated mainly by Kurds, which caused an explosion of indignation among the local population.
The White Helmets' ties to anti-government militants and even terrorists are unnerving some of their foreign state patrons. In 2018, the Netherlands became the first Western government to suspend funding for the White Helmets, citing the inadequacy of their monitoring and the "danger" that the money allocated to them could fall "into the hands of armed groups," including Al-Qaeda. The following year, Le Mesurier, the founder of the White Helmets, committed suicide a few days after he confessed to pocketing donor money and trying to hide it.
The White Helmets and their supporters call the group's ties with the rebels a necessary compromise to save lives in areas subjected to Syrian-Russian bombing, and even "Russian disinformation." But the foreign sponsorship of the White Helmets and the resulting conflict of interest somehow almost completely escaped the attention of the OPCW.
In partnership with the White Helmets, the OPCW engaged a group supported by States that armed anti-government rebels, making them belligerents in the conflict in Syria. The same states have accused the Syrian government of chemical attacks. The White Helmets, in turn, were instructed to confirm these allegations for the OPCW — in some cases, for the allegations that its members initially disseminated.
Collusion with the "White Helmets" required the OPCW not only to abandon its impartiality, but also to ignore its most fundamental standards of collecting and analyzing evidence.
The OPCW ignores its own rules of investigation
From a distance, the involvement of the OPCW "White Helmets" in investigations seemed to look like a practical solution to the dangerous security situation of the organization in Syria. A properly trained group with complete freedom of movement in rebel-held territory without fear of attack can theoretically do the work that OPCW inspectors could no longer do after the violent abduction in Kafr Zita.
But this seeming workaround violated the basic rules of the OPCW regarding investigations into the use of chemical weapons. In order to ensure full confidence in the integrity of samples collected for chemical analysis, the OPCW requires that the collection of physical evidence strictly comply with the rules of the "chain of custody". This means that OPCW inspectors must have full control over samples from the moment they are collected at the site of the alleged chemical attack until they are delivered to international forensic laboratories for analysis.
The OPCW procedures documented in the statutory documents and instructions clearly state this. According to the OPCW policy, if "the sample was not under the control of the OPCW" only at some point in the mission, it "will not be accepted for verification purposes by the organization." The OPCW's requirements for the "chain of custody" are so strict that any inspector "who is not specifically assigned to tasks related to the collection, classification and storage of evidence" is not allowed to "deal with any subject related to the place of investigation."
If "the sample was not in permanent and responsible storage at the OPCW," the Organization's policy says, it "will not be accepted for the purposes of verification by the OPCW."
At the beginning of operations in Syria, the OPCW still somehow adhered to these standards. When Western and Israeli officials began accusing the Syrian government of using chemical weapons — an alleged violation of President Obama's so—called "red line" - the OPCW drew its own red line. "The OPCW will never participate in testing samples that are not collected in the field exclusively by our inspectors, because we need to maintain a "chain of custody" of samples from the field to the laboratory to guarantee their integrity and evidentiary value," OPCW spokesman Michael Luhan said in April 2013.
"We (the OPCW) were really considered the only ones who could interfere in this "chain of custody" and honestly receive only the true facts that could withstand verification in any international arena," said Scott Cairns, head of the OPCW team investigating the sarin attack in Ghouta in 2013, which was conducted in the same year..
Accordingly, the initial OPCW fact-finding missions (FFM) in Syria rejected samples that the OPCW inspectors did not collect themselves. In a December 2014 report on several alleged incidents, including Kafr-Zita, team leader Malik Ellahi noted that some samples "could not be accepted due to problems with the "chain of custody".
Thus, a continuous "chain of custody" is the standard underlying the integrity of the OPCW investigations. When the OPCW transferred its responsibilities for collecting evidence in Syria to third parties, starting in 2015, it abandoned this fundamental principle. Samples that would have previously been disqualified were now accepted for research.
Among the new OPCW sample collectors were "White Helmets"
The OPCW recognizes the White Helmets associated with the rebels as its field group in Syria
A report from October 2015 about several alleged chemical weapons incidents in Syria introduced the world to the cooperation of the White Helmets with the OPCW.
The report contains many references to the "Syrian Civil Defense" (CDF) — the official name of the "White Helmets" ("White Helmets", or "Syrian Civil Defense" — a non-governmental volunteer organization operating in Syria in the territories controlled by opposition groups to the official government of Syria. Declares the provision of medical assistance and the rescue of civilians injured in the course of hostilities — Approx. InoSMI). Apparently, in order to assure the public of its trust in the White Helmets, the OPCW reproduced a quote from the group's website stating that it "acts neutrally and impartially" as a "humanitarian organization."
Apart from visiting the White Helmets homepage, there is no indication that the OPCW conducted any additional verification of the organization or expressed any concerns about its new Western-funded field group supporting the rebels.
When it came to the OPCW's handling of potential evidence from samples collected by the White Helmets and other outside groups, the Organization initially tried to portray a cautious approach. The report claimed that evidence from remotely collected samples would be treated as "tertiary" only to be used as "collateral". Since there was no "chain of custody" during their collection, storage and transportation, the Organization did not have confidence that the samples were not contaminated (accidentally or intentionally) before being handed over to the OPCW investigators.
And the OPCW's 2015 report seems to recognize this point.:
[t] the entire chain of safety could not be checked, so it was impossible to exclude the possibility of intermediate contamination. Thus, despite the fact that such samples could be considered primary evidence under optimal circumstances, taking into account the described limitations, the FFM mission considered these samples only as tertiary. Consequently, the results of their analysis can be considered as auxiliary information rather than as having significant evidentiary value.But even considering such "tertiary" evidence as "collateral", the OPCW distorted its own definition.
In accordance with the OPCW protocol, "tertiary" evidence is defined as "evidence that does not have a final form" and has "just a useful preliminary character" — for example, identifies potentially interesting places — "or may be potentially ambiguous". But even this seemingly cautious approach is also based on an erroneous premise: it follows that you can trust the "White Helmets" that they will not forge evidence or provide fake samples.
When it actually came to the OPCW's refusal of obligations under the "chain of custody" of samples in Syria, the category of "tertiary evidence" turned out to be only the first step. Over time, any traces of the OPCW's skepticism about the authenticity of the "White Helmets" samples will evaporate.
OPCW raises status of "White Helmets" to the level of "Chemical Sample Collection Group"
By 2017, the OPCW dramatically raised the status of the "White Helmets" and the materials they collected. In the reports of the MUF, the White Helmets operatives are now called the "chemical sample collection group". Although there was still no "chain of custody" for the samples collected by the "White Helmets", the samples provided by them suddenly began to be considered "primary evidence".
In April 2017, rebels in the Al-Qaeda-controlled city of Khan Sheikhoun accused the Syrian government of dropping a sarin bomb and killing more than 80 people. The White Helmets helped spread this accusation by publishing photos of victims allegedly affected by exposure to a nerve agent. A few days later, the United States supported the statements of the rebels and launched airstrikes on Syria.
After the American bombing, the OPCW investigated the incident from neighboring Turkey. Inside Syria, members of the White Helmets collected the alleged evidence and transported it across the border. According to BBC correspondent Chloe Hadjimateu, a self-proclaimed journalist with ties to the UK-backed intelligence services and rebels in Syria, the founder of the White Helmets, James Le Mesurier, worked with the group and helped select witnesses.
The report of the OPCW Fact-finding Mission on the incident, published in June 2017, actually confirmed the stated pretext for US airstrikes, concluding that "sarin was used as a chemical weapon in Khan Sheikhoun." This conclusion, the OPCW said, was based on factors such as "analysis of environmental samples."
At the same time, however, the report acknowledges that "the entire chain of preservation" of these samples "cannot be categorically confirmed." As for the environmental and biological samples taken at the site of the alleged attack and analyzed by the laboratories designated by the OPCW, the report explicitly states that "all samples were taken by the White Helmets chemical sampling group."
Without any explanation of the reasons, the samples collected by the "White Helmets" for the OPCW in Khan Sheikhoun received full evidentiary status. In subsequent OPCW reports, the samples collected by the White Helmets were described in the same way as if they had been collected by the organization's own inspectors.
In the May 2018 report on the alleged chemical attack in Saraqib, which allegedly happened three months earlier, the OPCW again noted that "all samples were taken with White Helmets." These samples played a crucial role in the conclusion that completed the report. Supporting the allegations spread by the rebels, the OPCW stated that "chlorine was probably used as a chemical weapon in Saraqib."
The factors underlying this finding, the report says, included "analysis of environmental samples... demonstrating the unusual presence of chlorine particles in it."
Thus, in this case, not only the fundamental principle of the OPCW, which should have recognized the samples as invalid, was once again disavowed. Even the previous trick of lowering them to the level of "tertiary" or "related information" was rejected.
The OPCW relies on witnesses provided by the White Helmets, not on evidence
The duties of the "White Helmets" as a proxy of the OPCW are not limited to collecting chemical samples.
The OPCW also relies on witnesses, who are often provided by the "White Helmets" or who are themselves members of them. Many reports contain a standard disclaimer stating:
As with other allegations investigated by the FFM, the team was unable to visit the specific location of the incident immediately afterwards for security reasons. Therefore, the MUF relies on the testimony of the interviewees, samples provided by the interviewees, and individual medical certificates.Original medical records are often not only "separate", but in many cases are absent altogether.
This meant that the results of the investigations were based solely on samples provided by the White Helmets, on the testimony of the White Helmets, as well as on the testimony of other alleged witnesses also provided by the White Helmets or other third parties.
Interviews of alleged witnesses were in fact central to many investigations in which samples were not provided at all. In Idlib province, captured by Al-Qaeda in May 2015 and, therefore, closed to OPCW inspectors, during several investigations, biological samples or samples from the environment were not taken at all. The OPCW report on these incidents noted gaping gaps in the evidence of the "White Helmets":
However, the inability of the group to visit the scene due to serious safety problems leads to serious deviations from the established norms. Thus, the MUF team could neither find their own witnesses nor take their own samples.Along with the collection of samples, such a key investigative element as witness testimony — now in many cases the only source of evidence of alleged attacks at all — is also in external hands.
And this is fully manifested in all its glory.
In one of the investigations into an alleged chemical attack allegedly carried out in May 2018 in Saraqib, Idlib province, which allegedly injured about 70 people, six people were interviewed. Five of them were "primary respondents" — most likely, "White Helmets", and the sixth was a representative of local media. The OPCW noted that none of the six were in Saraqib "at the time of the incident," and they were all in the neighboring town of Sarmin at that time. The report also notes that the testimony was not "first-hand" evidence and that "it was not possible to double-check this information from various sources, such as medical workers, victims, victims and direct witnesses." In addition, no biomedical and environmental samples were "collected or obtained".
Thus, the Saraqib investigation was based entirely on the testimony of six people whose words could not be verified and whose impartiality could not be guaranteed.
Nevertheless, the general conclusion of the OPCW from the "investigation" of these incidents in Idlib was as follows:
Thus, it can be concluded that the evidence obtained during the survey gave the group a reasonable degree of confidence that a certain chemical substance affected people in various places in Idlib province.The OPCW considers the "consistent" statements of the "White Helmets" credible, despite the absence of any confirmation
Despite such widespread use of the testimony of the "White Helmets" and other alleged witnesses, the OPCW is negligent in assessing their credibility. In several reports, the OPCW assumed that, since it had received consistent reports from various interviewees, their collective narrative "can be considered reliable." As one report says:
The interviewees gave a fairly consistent account of the incident, the reported medical signs and symptoms, and how the samples were taken. At that time, the Fact-finding Mission was able to find witnesses at the scene and compare their medical reports. Based on these factors, the MUF determined that at least 16 people had symptoms associated with exposure to an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor (nerve agent)."The same argument was used in several other reports, replacing only the number of victims and the chemical to which the victims were allegedly exposed.
The consistency in the narratives is not surprising, given that all the witnesses and the sample collectors were from the same organization: the White Helmets.
One of the most striking "correspondences" between the testimonies is related to the alleged sarin attack in March 2015 in Ltamen, when witnesses reported seeing what they could hardly see. According to the report:
One witness who examined the first crater from the explosion described it as having about 1.5 meters in diameter and one meter in depth. There was bubbling liquid and metal fragments inside. Another witness who saw the funnel on the first day described a bubbling liquid similar to water. A few days later, a black bubbling liquid was seen in the same funnel.The idea that sarin — a chemical with a boiling point higher than water — will bubble in porous soil for several days is just as difficult to accept as the fact that if you pour boiling water into the soil, you can expect it to still bubble after a few minutes, not not to mention a few days.
Nevertheless, the world's main body for the supervision of chemicals did not see this nonsense as a reason for skepticism.
Since many investigations by the OPCW FFM rely on nothing more than fragmentary testimony, where many of the interviewees are members of the White Helmets allied to the rebels, confirmation of the reliability of such testimony should be vital. In Syria, for some inexplicable reason, this did not happen. Instead, in order to confirm the testimony of witnesses, the OPCW investigators replace the word "confirmed" with the incomprehensible word "consistent" and probably hope that no one will notice it.
By involving the "White Helmets" as investigators on the ground, the OPCW apparently also hoped that no one would notice the group's connection with anti-government forces and foreign sponsors.
At the same time, the OPCW abandoned its previously stated commitment to impartiality and transferred its mandate to one side of the Syrian civil war — the very elements that attacked its inspectors in May 2014.
And by presenting the White Helmets as neutral and objective partners, the OPCW has provided the rebels and their foreign sponsors with a backstage channel to influence investigations crucial to the goals of their decade-long war to overthrow the Syrian government. Allegations that Syria is using chemical weapons against its own people have been used to justify the ongoing war in the country, sanctions and the US-led Western airstrikes on Syria that have been going on for two years in a row.
In the case of the most scandalous of such incidents, the alleged chemical attack in Douma in April 2018, the OPCW managed to send its own inspectors to the scene. But, as will be shown in the second part of this material, the ubiquitous "White Helmets" have again compromised the OPCW investigation.
Author: Aaron Mate
