28 April 2018 12:00 am
DAILY MAIL, 28th APRIL, 2018
Russia ratcheted up its efforts Thursday to try to disprove that a Syrian town was hit by a poison gas attack, bringing a group of Syrians, including an 11-year-old boy, to the global chemical weapons watchdog’s headquarters to denounce the reports as fake. The U.S., Britain, France and their allies boycotted the event at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, branding it as “nothing more than a crude propaganda exercise” and an “obscene masquerade.”
The Syrians were flown to Europe to tell their stories at the OPCW and then ushered into a roomful of reporters at a nearby hotel where they all repeated nearly identical accounts: There was no chemical attack in Douma, near Damascus, on April 7. Patients who visited the hospital suffering from asphyxiation had inhaled only smoke and dust. There were no chemical traces or smells. Panic was sparked when first responders entered the hospital and began yelling that chemical weapons had been used.