The OPCW Whistle Blowers only tell the world what was known in the first place: “Something is wrong with this picture.”
Says Gracie, a Syrian feminist FPM.news will introduce, “What these slide-rule pushers completely miss is that dozens of babies and moms were slaughtered in this suburb of Damascus in the most tortuous manner—babies and moms were chemically asphyxiated in a deliberate execution.”
“First the killers dropped a big mortar from the helicopter to make a hole and then they dropped a large canister through the hole to drip and vaporize down into the basement many floors down where the bombs were not reaching. And this we have seen done previously with chemicals and with gasoline and nails in homemade barrel bombs,” she adds.
So-called whistleblowers have this week identified where flaws in a report by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) may have led to wrongful conclusions about the source of the chemical attack in Douma, Syria on 7 April 2018. It clears the Syrians and aims at the Russians. But it makes no sense at all.
by Micheal John
Notice of possible observational selection bias: Publisher, The RINJ Foundation, and its operating entities including Feminine-Perspective Magazine, FPM.news and RINJ.Press have come under considerable attack from the Kremlin of late and whereas FPM.news makes every attempt possible at fair and balanced reporting, it might be accused of a bias in the matter of the killings of women and children in Douma on 7 April 2018.
This article will explain how Russian FSB actors using chemical agents killed dozens of women and children of rebel fighters’ families to encourage the otherwise unbudging rebels in a Damascus suburb to surrender the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta to Bashar al-Assad. These operators did this work from aboard HIP helicopters operated by the Assad regime.
The 7 April 2018 chemical attack led to the deaths of more than four dozen vulnerable persons in a Damascus residential suburb known as Douma, in eastern Ghouta district, Syria. This massacre slaughtered mostly small children with their mothers. The scene was horrific and the deaths would have involved unimaginable suffering. Could it have been accidental? There’s only one other possibility.
Saleh Abdulrahim, a displaced grandfather sided with the rebels against Bashar al-Assad, while living in an Idlib IDP camp a month prior to the event said that he and his family with other families had left a “crowded basement room of 200 in Douma, leaving some forty women and children behind.”
He also described a residential suburb where the population was hiding from Syrian and Russian bombing and artillery attacks that pulverized the civilian suburban region.
Liwa al-Islam Rebels were stubborn holdouts in Douma
Who wanted Jaish al-Islamists (Liwa al-Islam) killed? Maybe Syria, Iran, The United States, Britain and probably more interveners including competing Salfist jihadist extremists sided against the brutal Assad Regime.
The Russians, however, who were trying to negotiate a truce with the maniacally stubborn Jaish al-Islamists rebels, top the list of those with extreme antipathy toward this brand of Assad-opposed Syrian rebels. The Islamist rebels were unflinching. They would stay and fight to the end in Douma.
The methodology of committing the 7 April 2018 war crime and then executing a complicated and highly choreographed array of confounding distractions is right out of Vladimir Putin’s playbook. Other journalists who have studied the man, concur on at least the methodology.
On 12 March 2018, Yasser Dulwan of the Jaish al-Islamist group which completely controlled eastern Ghouta as an Opposition-governed territory said an “agreement had been reached to evacuate the sick and wounded civilians,” from Douma. He and his fighters would stay, he stubbornly added.
In late March 2018, Jaish al-Islam’s military spokesperson, a man named Hamza Birqdar, told Syrian radio station Radio al-Kul in a Skype connection shared to FPM.news by al-Kul, that his group was “not ever leaving Douma”.
Meanwhile the Russians were still trying to work with Birqdar and Dulwan to get them to agree to leave.
Who murdered two groups of persons who chemically asphyxiated in Douma during the Syrian and Russian bombardment of the residential area?
Grace Edwards of The RINJ Foundation who was in the area seven days after Birqdar swore he would not allow his troops to leave, claims that the 7 April 2018 tragedy in Douma was an execution, probably of Jaish al-Islam women and their children, to shock Birqdar and Dulwan into evacuating their people. As you will read below, she was right. The next day a terrified leadership began to bend to the Russian wishes.
When asked, Edwards prefered not to accept the alternative that “it could have been an accidental asphyxiation caused by the heavy bombing’s disruption of existing and yet unopened canisters of chemical weapons”.
“To pressure the obstinate rebel Jaish al-Islam fighters the Russians murdered these Jaish al-Islam mothers and babies—children too small to be previously evacuated. The Russians then baited the foolish American-backed White Helmets group into some kind of fake response to weakly blame Bashar al-Assad’s regime, a claim Russia could easily rebuke eventually” says Edwards.
The photo and its story: This is Douma in spring of 2018 where rooms full of vulnerable small children & their moms were executed during Bashar al-Assad’s cleansing of ‘rebels’ from the area. Photo Credit: source supplied. Photo Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective Magazine
“Obscurity, inhumanity & devastation are the only reliable truths of the Syrian Civil War brought by a patriarch comprised of multinational kleptocrats & authoritarians. The 7 April 2018 cold-case murder of women & children is deserving of capital punishment. Women will find justice for this crime no matter how many leaders that brings down,” says a very angry feminist, Gracie Edwards, a Syrian nurse who has survived years of NGO work in war zones.
Edwards says she is justified in her quest for justice because, “the United Nations since February 2018 had been urging a ceasefire and insisting on the complete evacuation of eastern Ghouta prior to any military action taking place in this residential suburban part of Damascus which had been held for many months by al-Assad’s opposition.”
Click to enlarge. See also original work. Photo Credit: 16 September 1999 Public Domain at the request of the author. The original work is here. Photo Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective Magazine
Grace Edwards also points out that the complicated scenario of committing atrocities against the families of Douma rebels smacks of Putin’s style. Putin has been loudly accused of destroying apartment buildings and slaughtering 300 + residents in four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk in September 1999 as a device for political action in his favour. He used it as a rationale for attacking Chechnya despite local police capturing three agents of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation; agents who had planted devices at an additional target, in Ryazan. It’s a complicated set of tactics with a solid Soviet KGB thinking strategy. Putin is a KGB man of longstanding. Since those days he has become the world’s foremost statesman—one who relies on corruption and subterfuge to impose his will.
The KGB was succeeded by the Federal Counterintelligence Service (FSK) of Russia, which was later replaced by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB).
According to Edwards, “the Russian negotiators dealing with Jaish al-Islam were frustrated by the rebel’s endless obstinacy and stubbornness hence it began slaughtering the male-fighters’ babies and wives to leverage the negotiations.
“The Russian side is furious at the accusation and continues to aim for more confusing events and accusations to cloud the air,” says Edwards.
“The Russian military acts as if it is mystified by the events and accusations spawned by the 7 April event. The local military’s conduct is likely genuine, those officials having no idea what the FSB was doing in Douma.” That’s the theory according to Edwards and colleagues who have well-established contacts in the region among all sides.
Photo Credit: source supplied. Photo Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective Magazine On 13 March 2018 ill, physically challenged or wounded residents began to leave Douma.
Whistle blowers leaked this report: Engineering-assessment-of-two-cylinders-observed-at-the-Douma-incident-27-February-2019.
Several medical experts from The RINJ Foundation listened to interviews published on YouTube by The Grayzone.
“It sounds like these old men are fighting among each other claiming their opinion is better than another opinion about some trash allegedly dragged around in a war zone,” said one angry doctor in a semi-private conversation. “They should have asked the people who saw this happen.”
After a short dialogue it was revealed that the anger came from the fact that nobody among the OPCW showed care for the victims. The patients who survived were left to the mercy of untrained camera-zealots who were pretending to provide medical assistance to persons unknown who later vanished when follow-up questions were to be asked and real medical support administered. But were they victims? Some complain they were just gazers who happened along that day and found themselves dragged into a photo shoot. If a person was huddled in basement rooms where the gas from these containers would eventually concentrate, that person would not be alive unless severely incapacitated. Chlorine gas would have replaced the breathable air under the two locations in question. That is what FPMag sources saw and reported at the time.
Also noted at the time and stated in the recent aftermath, the makeshift “White Helmets clinic vanished as quickly as it appeared”. Were these actors complicit in the murder of the children and women of rival fighters’ families in Douma as Russia has implied? No. FPM.news has spoken to witnesses who saw what happened.
Many women and children, at least four dozen were chemically asphyxiated to death that day.
Wearing faked hazmat gear, so-called White Helmet medical workers appeared for cameras carrying the bodies of infants and toddlers, holding them in their bare hands and bare arms with improperly sealed gas masks and over-garments. Had there been an enduring chemical weapon attack, these people would not have survived their contamination. But attack with weaponized chlorine is usually for effect, however, if you wish to replace the air in the basement with a toxic gas, use chlorine. It will keep sinking even through porous concrete and soil and eventually disappear with barely a trace that looks like floor cleaner to a forensic examiner. It has been very popular with all the malign actors in the Middle East who want to kill the civilians hiding from the bombs in their basements.
Unequivocally, that is what happened on 7 April 2018.
The medical assistance of White Helmets FPM.news sources witnessed was “sloshing water on non-contaminated unsuspecting kids and also children from the first building’s second floor who were having breathing issues as a result of exposure to a low concentration of chlorine. They were administering to children an adult ventolin inhaler”, says Gracie, a skilled Syrian nurse who has worked in combat zones for over five years.
Clearly the White Helmet workers were making a best effort despite being untrained. The best effort was unfortunately at propaganda and confusion.
The fortunate reality is that chlorine gas attacks are normally survivable for those who get out of its way as it heads toward the lowest areas. It burns the eyes and all exposed mucous membranes, nose and mouth–lungs if breathed.
“The basement dwellers,” says Edwards, “would have been fully overwhelmed with about 30 seconds of action time to save themselves. In that time they would be asphyxiating, sucking the burning gas and suffering horrible pain. They may not have realized they were at the bottom of a congregating cloud of gas and dripping chemical.”
That’s what witnesses believe they saw in the aftermath. Horrible.
From the evidence of RINJ Foundation medical volunteers who responded to late neighbours’ requests for assistance to rumoured victims after the event, it seemed clear that the deceased were killed in place, together with or by a chlorine asphyxiant. Tests later proved that to be correct.
IT WORKED. The rebels were decimated by the events of 7 April.
They immediately broke down and resolved with Russia that on 12 April 2018, with only four days notice, 13,000 Jaysh al-Islam fighters would leave Douma under an unambiguous ceasefire taking out their surviving family members, thus surrendering Douma to Assad without a fight.
Confusion, even chaos are characteristic of war and also deliberately induced as propaganda.
What is not confusing is that the capitulation of Jaysh al-Islam male fighters ended what otherwise likely would have been the decimation of many thousands of lives. Urban warfare goes that way as can be seen all across the Middle East after America bombed thousands of buildings to rubble and took the best part of a million lives. That lined the pockets of many billionaires who sold bombs etc.
Did the Russians save the lives of thousands of civilians and prevent the destruction of Damascus?
“The deaths of more than four dozen women and children, may have saved thousands of lives exactly as a RUssian man told me, but I want the biggest (fword) monument in all of Syria erected to those babies and their mothers,” says Edwards. “And I want the truth.”
Later evaluation of bio-medical samples that were shared with authorities but also independently evaluated, because one cannot trust anyone who is warfighting, clearly imply without any hesitation that the victims had been subjected to some form of chlorine-based chemical poisoning and that a form of chlorine was present in the samples. That doesn’t certify the cause of death. The people were asphyxiated. They may have drowned in their own sputum. But above all, the chlorine replaced their breathable air as it drifted in from above.
The evidentiary items of the events of 7 April 2018 were spread across five sites including two locations where “White Helmets” were congregating and one site where some canisters were deduced by the locals as “evidence”.
All sites were tainted by steps taken by persons who were likely good-intentioned persons who were incompetent as first responders.
“Theories are unwelcome, “ said Dr. Buni, now in Idlib, Syria, near Aleppo, who first questioned the two sources FPMag relied on for its April 2018 reports.
Medical sources to FPM.news in April of 2018, people who just happened to be in the area who were summoned to a scene in the aftermath of a traumatic event, said, “We don’t know who is responsible for any of this activity but we do know that many innocent civilians were killed on 7 April when the Syrian military attacked Douma vigorously.”
Later, their colleagues filled in some blanks. The Russian-made helicopters had been spotted. Insiders began to talk. Some rationale was shared. Yes. That day prevented what could have been the bloodiest part of the Syrian War.
“But none of this is excusable,” says Edwards. “The Americans bombed some chemical weapons ‘storages’ one time only and then stopped. They should have done more.”
Too tragic for publication, FPM.news has been given source-supplied photographic evidence of victim deaths that graphically support what Edwards describes as “A heartbreak scene: single-parent families with little ones strewn among makeshift bedding across a floor, they were dead from chemical asphyxiation. Little babies who died with their moms, probably while sleeping, or just where they laid, waiting for something other than this tragedy. They were executed in that room,” she believes. The evidence overwhelmingly supports her belief.
The record of events from a previous article:
“On 7 April 2018, in Douma near Damascus, many Syrian civilians were found dead after reports and evidence emerged of canisters being dropped by HIP helicopters apparently with typical Syrian military markings.”
“On 14 April 2018, the UK, USA and France cooperated and launched missiles against chemical weapons facilities in Syria. The Syrian side says there were no casualties but they are angry that their chemical weapons facilities were attacked.”
“The deceased in Douma (here) had symptoms of complex chemical poisoning and asphyxiation. The surviving critically injured patients were prepped for evacuation to the street. The victims were found in a basement and on the second floor of a building in Douma where a canister, we were told, had been dropped on the top part of a building.”
Gaseous chlorine is about 2.5 times heavier than air. It would fall to the basement and keep going through any downward path, accumulate where blocked and continue more slowly through drains, sewers or even wiring channels and mouse holes.
“Among the images from that day were some apparent chemical weapon canisters of the improvised commercial grade often used by the Assad Regime as air-droppable from helicopters,” says Edwards.
According to Behar Abbasi, who was also visiting the area to assist the evacuation of long-resident family members, she with others actually eyeballed the canisters, “somewhat damaged, decayed and present through holes in the concrete made by other means”.
It was her belief at the time and the belief of excited locals that the items had been dropped there after other ordnance made the holes. Many had seen this before.
What looked like an industrial gas cylinder was found atop the roof—an outdoor patio—of a Douma area apartment block. This was found next to a cratered hole in the reinforced concrete roof opening to a room below. It had missed and not passed into the hole but its contents likely had gone down that way.
Photo Credit: source supplied. Photo Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective Magazine
Another location yielded a similar industrial gas cylinder atop a crushed bed in the top floor of an apartment building with a similar cratered opening in the rebar reinforced concrete above the item.
What the Syrians had been seen doing is dropping what Abbasi described might have been mortar rounds, “from a helicopter holding in place 25 meters or so above the roof, and after making a big hole, I actually saw men kicking or rolling a big cylinder from the back of the helicopter [cargo] big door into the hole of the building made by the first smaller bomb.”
- In the case of the outdoor patio, the attacker’s canister missed the hole.
- In the case of the bedroom, they didn’t miss. The canister went through the hole and landed on the bed in the picture above.
- The vaporized yellowish gas in the first instance would have partly blown around outside and some liquid would have flowed down through the exploded mortar’s hole and in the second case the liquid or vaporized gas flowed downward from the bedroom eventually down to the basement through the building. The outcome confirms this as well.
- The leaked OPCW report is fishy of itself and appears to be concocted by people who have never seen or heard of the civil war in Syria. Their arguments are outrageous nonsense. Engineering-assessment-of-two-cylinders-observed-at-the-Douma-incident-27-February-2019.
Killing those Women & Kids Will be Assad’s & Putin’s Waterloo
Russian military workers in the area of Douma showed to FPM.news sources, evidence of chemical warfare labs in tunnels near the scene of this alleged 7 April event. Those sources say that the evidence is unequivocal. FPM.news sources saw several photographs of the evidence. FPM.news did not obtain any chemical analysis but the Russian sources confirm that they did chemical evaluations and that these items were bags of precursor chemicals for weapons, like hexamine, but not actual weapons.
‘Obviously someone in the area, any one of al Quaeda, al-Nusra, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, ISIS, or the so-called “White Helmets” themselves was involved in malfeasance that resulted in the deaths of over four dozen persons,’ we should believe.
Interestingly, hexamine was the main ingredient used to blow up apartment buildings and kill Russians in, a series of KGB-like sabotage events that brought war to Chechnya and fame and a presidency to Vladimir Putin.
Who are these “White Helmets”
The “White Helmets” are part of the Syrian Opposition Forces and have been featured in hundreds of propaganda videos and photographs. The group is proactive in its opposition to the Assad Regime and also opposes Assad’s Russian and Iranian allies. It has allegations against it of creating scenes of murder and then pretending to discover the scenes, blaming crimes on its enemies.
That organization is certainly a suspect in the events of 7 April. They would be a candidate for blame were it not for the fact they do not, right up to the White House, have any semblance of leadership with sufficient intelligence or devance capable of pulling off such a monstrous deception. Their usual modus is to act like panicked jackrabbits and run around with injured children performing any number of dramas in front of cameras. They are guilty of plenty of war crimes but not this one.
The “White Helmets” group, according to a couple of its volunteers who spoke to FPM.news on condition of anonimoty, would not exist if not for the financial support of the United States government and the Central Intelligence Agency.
“Complaints against the White Helmets include severe mishandling of both patients and cadavers for camera operators even much worse, to causing the death of patients who needed medical attention but were not correctly identified but were “transported” without due preparation, precaution and care,” say some of their peers. (A reminder from Edwards, “do not move a patient with a broken neck!”)
The complaints against the White Helmets in the 7 April matter extend to complicity in the fabrication of fake evidentiary material in what was actually a serious war crime. The scenes were so severely damaged by these actors that real forensic investigators could not complete their work.
Notwithstanding, the story of how 50 people died of asphyxiation at that time remains incomplete.
The tragic reality remains that they are deceased by tragic events outside their control be it accidental or deliberate. It nevertheless was a murder and if as the Russians say, Syria did not do this, it was unequivocally the work of Russia, not that this makes any difference as the work of the two is as if it is done by one.
“Hopefully Putin and Assad will live long enough to share a cell during their trial,” says Edwards.
“None of the actors have the color of right save those local untrained civilians who tried to summon help and eventually who fled because so many things were amiss,” remembers Behar Abbasi.
Methodology in Edwards’ accusation is the proven playbook style of Vladimir Putin. Plan to take some time to watch and learn. This is solid reporting on Putin’s past methodology from Canada’s renown CBC Fifth Estate. When you look at Putin thereafter, see him as a global gangster everyone fears. Maybe the kids he killed in Douma would have called him a “monster”. Maybe they do.
Additional reading:
- How can you oppose destruction of Syria’s Chemical Weapons?
Published: Tue, 17 Apr 2018 06:45:20 by Melissa Hemingway (Feminine-Perspective staff writer) The Russians say the chemical attack in Douma was orchestrated by foreign secret agents who we must presume have film writers magic at their disposal such as operators like 007 James Bond. In any … Read ?How can you oppose destruction of Syria’s Chemical Weapons?
- UNSC Responsibility for Maintaining Peace – António Guterres
Published: Sun, 15 Apr 2018 08:18:42 The following is UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ complete briefing to the UN Security Council on Syria I have been following closely the reports of air strikes in Syria conducted by the United States, France and the United Kingdom. Last night at … Read ?UNSC Responsibility for Maintaining Peace – António Guterres
- Could be a Last Chance to Fix Syrian Crisis
Published: Sun, 15 Apr 2018 08:11:17 Return to Diplomacy and a Political Resolution B1 Bomber in Qatar being prepared for departure. – US DOD Photo Syria’s Barzah Chemical weapons Facility – Photo: DigitalGlobe A Modest Military Message Against using Chemical Weapons is followed by Diplomacy and … Read ?Could be a Last Chance to Fix Syrian Crisis
- Syria Chemical Attack Report: France Releases Intel
Published: Sat, 14 Apr 2018 12:12:27 US DOD Photo – James N. Mattis US Secretary of Defence created plan to strike Syria’s Chemical weapons Facilities this weekend. Above: Britain’s PM Theresa May and France’s President Emmanuel Macron. Their statements appear below France’s INTELLIGENCE REPORT. UN Secretary … Read ?Syria Chemical Attack Report: France Releases Intel
- USA, Britain, France Attack Syria – Putin Angry
Published: Sat, 14 Apr 2018 11:36:11 In a modest attack on Syria, a coordinated mission done by the USA, France and Britain using air-launched cruise missiles with high-explosive (HE) warheads, Bashar al-Assad lost some sinister chemical weapons assets. We wonder how much of that was from … Read ?USA, Britain, France Attack Syria – Putin Angry
- “No military solution to the Syrian conflict.” – António Guterres
Published: Fri, 13 Apr 2018 21:17:33 April 13, 2018 – UN Secretary-General António Guterres Addresses UN Security Council Today “The situation in the Middle East is in chaos — to such an extent it has become a threat to international peace and security. The region is facing … Read ?“No military solution to the Syrian conflict.” – António Guterres
- MAD Prevails. Humanity Lost In Syria
Published: Fri, 13 Apr 2018 02:23:59 Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) between the USA and Russia has prevailed. The (is-it-real-or-is-it-Twitter) Donald Trump in Washington has been backed into the shadows while Russia’s Vladimir Putin wins a diplomatic coup against the USA? It doesn’t matter. Neither the USA … Read ?MAD Prevails. Humanity Lost In Syria
- They Used Sarin on Children: Assad & Putin
Published: Wed, 11 Apr 2018 15:13:33 While the World Health Organization (WHO) demanded free access to the Douma suburb of Damascus hours ago, many hundreds of medical workers operate in clinics while others freelance as EMS responders. — by … Read ?They Used Sarin on Children: Assad & Putin
- Assad Won Syria Civil War. Only Humanity is Needed. Not U.S. Bombs.
Published: Mon, 09 Apr 2018 22:27:14— Military retaliation against Damascus only hurts more women & children. Making the institutions of peace and humanitarianism work is the only way ahead. Syria’s despicable dictator Bashar al-Assad, his brutal confreres, and Russia’s … Read ?Assad Won Syria Civil War. Only Humanity is Needed. Not U.S. Bombs.
- Douma Chem-Attack: UN Secretary General Issues Calm Statement
Published: Mon, 09 Apr 2018 20:32:17 UN Secretary-General Voices Deep Concern over Renewed Violence in Douma, Syria, Stressing that Chemical Weapons Use, if Confirmed, Requires Investigation UN Secretary-General António Guterres says he is deeply concerned about renewed and intensive violence in Douma in eastern Ghouta over … Read ?Douma Chem-Attack: UN Secretary General Issues Calm Statement