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Independent Investigative Journalism Since 1995
UN Syria-Sarin Investigator Voices Doubts
May 7, 2014
More doubts about last Augusts Sarin attack in Syria are being raised by
the U.N.s lead investigator who questions the number of people actually
exposed to the poison gas, suggesting the incident was much more limited
than claimed, writes Gareth Porter for Inter Press Service.
By Gareth Porter
The head of the U.N. team that investigated the Aug. 21, 2013 Sarin attack
in the Damascus suburbs, Ake Sellstrom, is doubtful about the number of
victims of the attack reported immediately after the event. Sellstrom has
suggested that many people who claimed to have been seriously affected by
Sarin merely imagined that they had suffered significant exposure to the
chemical.
Underlying Sellstroms doubts are data on symptoms from a sample of people
who said they were severely affected by the Sarin attack. The data,
published in the U.N. teams September 2013 report, appear to belie the
claims of Sarin intoxication by those in the sample, according to experts
who have analyzed them.
<img class="size-medium wp-image-11965" alt="Ake Sellstrom, who led the
United Nations' investigation into the Aug. 21, 2013 Sarin gas attack in
Syria."
src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Ake-Sellstrom-300
x199.jpg" width="300" height="199"
srcset="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Ake-Sellstrom-
300x199.jpg 300w,
https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Ake-Sellstrom-260x172.
jpg 260w,
https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Ake-Sellstrom-160x106.
jpg 160w,
https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Ake-Sellstrom.jpg
485w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Ake Sellstrom, who led the United Nations investigation into the Aug. 21,
2013 Sarin gas attack in Syria.
Sellstrom expressed his doubts in an interview with Gwyn Winfield, the
editor of the CBRNe World Magazine, that was published in the February
issue. [CBRNe stands for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and
high- yield Explosives.]
If you take the figures from Tokyo, you can compare how many died versus
those that were intoxicated, said Sellstrom. But in the case of the Syrian
attack, he said, [W]hile we could conclude that it was big, we couldnt do
the same for how many died or were affected.
He expressed doubt that many of the alleged survivors of the attack had been
exposed to Sarin. You can get many symptoms from other items in a war,
Sellstrom said, [P]hosphorous smoke, tear gas, many of those devices on the
battlefield will affect the lungs, eyes and give you respiratory problems.
Then Sellstrom added, Also in any theater of war, people will claim they
are intoxicated. We saw it in Palestine, Afghanistan and everywhere else.
Now a project manager at the European CBRNE Centre in Umea, Sellstrom did
not respond to e-mail requests from IPS for comment on this article by
deadline. However, his remarks to CBRNe were evidently influenced strongly
by the teams experience in gathering data on several dozen alleged victims
who claimed to have been among the most heavily exposed to Sarin on Aug. 21.
Sellstrom explained to Winfield that the investigating team had sought the
help of the opposition in the area where the attack took place to identify
as many as 80 survivors of the Sarin attack. We thought that if they can
gather 80 people who were affected but still surviving, that it [would be]
clearly indicative that a major event had taken place, he said.
Sellstrom revealed in the interview that the team had chosen 40 people from
the original 80 identified as survivors by the opposition. Those 36 people
described themselves as having had very serious exposure to Sarin. Thirty of
the 36 reported rocket strikes either on or near their homes. The remaining
six said they had gone to a point of impact to help those suffering from the
attack.
The U.N. report provided detailed statistics on the symptoms reported by the
36 individuals and concluded the data were consistent with organophosphate
intoxication. But chemical weapons specialists have identified serious
contradictions in the data that appear to indicate the contrary.
Twenty-eight of the 36 victims nearly four-fifths of the sample said they
had experienced loss of consciousness, according to the Sept. 16 U.N.
report. The second most frequent symptom was difficulty breathing, which was
reported by 22 of the 36, followed by blurred vision, which was suffered by
15 of them. But only five of the 36 reported miosis, or constricted pupils.
That fact is an indication that the exposure to Sarin was actually minimal
or nonexistent for 31 of the 36, or 86 percent of the sample. Miosis is the
most basic and reliable indicator of nerve gas poisoning, according to
chemical weapons literature and specialists who analyzed the report.
As little as four mg of Sarin per cubic meter for just two minutes would
have triggered that physiological response, according to an April 17 email
from UK-based American chemical weapons specialist Dan Kaszeta in April. A
2002 article in the journal Critical Care Medicine put the minimum exposure
necessary to cause miosis at one mg of Sarin per cubic meter for three
minutes.
Yet miosis was the least prevalent symptom among those people claiming to
have been very seriously exposed to Sarin in Syria. Dr. Abbas Faroutan, an
Iranian physician who treated Iranian victims of Iraqi nerve gas attacks,
noted that the data were not logical.
Seven of the 36 people identified as victims told investigators they had
lost a combined total of 39 members of their immediate families who were
killed in buildings they said were either points of impact of the rockets or
only 20 meters (64 feet) away. However, only one of the seven exhibited the
constriction of pupils and only one reported nausea and vomiting.
Despite the paucity of the most fundamental indicator of exposure to Sarin,
31 of the 36 were found to have a trace of Sarin in their blood samples.
That seeming contradiction is explained by the fact that even exposure to an
amount of Sarin too small to cause any symptoms would be detected in the
blood using an extremely sensitive method called fluoride reactivation,
according to Kaszeta.
The U.N. team found that six of the people who claimed serious exposure to
Sarin had no trace of Sarin in their blood at all, indicating that they had
in fact experienced no exposure to Sarin at all. Kaszeta said he had
concluded that the people interviewed and evaluated by the UN didnt have
serious exposure to nerve gas.
The indication that the overwhelming majority in the sample had very little
or no exposure to Sarin was particularly significant, because those in the
sample had been chosen by local opposition authorities as being among the
most serious affected survivors. The data suggest that the Syrian opposition
and its external supporters had vastly exaggerated the scope and severity of
the attack.
In an apparent reference to the questionable data on symptoms collected on
the 36 alleged survivors, Sellstrom told Winfield the investigators need to
be better at differential diagnostics on the intoxication, better medical
markers.
Selstrom also expressed doubt about the numbers of victims said to have been
treated at local hospitals. The U.N. investigators visited two of the three
hospitals in the Damascus suburbs that had treated victims of the attack and
had provided figures for the numbers of victims they had treated.
[T]he figures they provided of people who passed through them was just not
possible, said Sellstrom. It is impossible that they could have turned
over the amount of people they claim they did.
Sellstrom did not refer to the total number of victims claimed by hospital
administrators, but Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) issued a statement last
Aug. 24 that three hospitals near the area of the attack had reported to MSF
that they received approximately 3,600 patients displaying neurotoxic
symptoms in less than three hours on the morning of Wednesday, August 21,
2013. MSF said 355 had died.
Sellstrom repeated his doubts about the total number of victims of Sarin
intoxication and the numbers of patients said to have been treated in
hospitals in a March 11 interview with the website Syria in Crisis
affiliated with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The head of the Syria investigation had also investigated the use of
chemical weapons by Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war for the U.N. He had been
Chief Inspector for UNSCOM, the U.N. Commission on Iraqs compliance with
the ban on weapons of mass destruction, and head of its successor, UNMOVIC.
He has apparently questioned the larger narrative of Syrian government
culpability for the attack as well. In an interview with the Wall Street
Journal after the release of the follow-up December U.N. investigation
report, Sellstrom said he believes both sides in the Syrian conflict had the
opportunity and the capability to carry out chemical weapons attacks.
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UN Syria-Sarin Investigator Voices Doubts
May 7, 2014
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More doubts about last Augusts Sarin attack in Syria are being raised by
the U.N.s lead investigator who questions the number of people actually
exposed to the poison gas, suggesting the incident was much more limited
than claimed, writes Gareth Porter for Inter Press Service.
By Gareth Porter
The head of the U.N. team that investigated the Aug. 21, 2013 Sarin attack
in the Damascus suburbs, Ake Sellstrom, is doubtful about the number of
victims of the attack reported immediately after the event. Sellstrom has
suggested that many people who claimed to have been seriously affected by
Sarin merely imagined that they had suffered significant exposure to the
chemical.
Underlying Sellstroms doubts are data on symptoms from a sample of people
who said they were severely affected by the Sarin attack. The data,
published in the U.N. teams September 2013 report, appear to belie the
claims of Sarin intoxication by those in the sample, according to experts
who have analyzed them.
https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Ake-Sellstrom.jpghttps
://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Ake-Sellstrom.jpg
Ake Sellstrom, who led the United Nations investigation into the Aug. 21,
2013 Sarin gas attack in Syria.
Sellstrom expressed his doubts in an interview with Gwyn Winfield, the
editor of the CBRNe World Magazine, that was published in the February
issue. [CBRNe stands for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and
high- yield Explosives.]
If you take the figures from Tokyo, you can compare how many died versus
those that were intoxicated, said Sellstrom. But in the case of the Syrian
attack, he said, [W]hile we could conclude that it was big, we couldnt do
the same for how many died or were affected.
He expressed doubt that many of the alleged survivors of the attack had been
exposed to Sarin. You can get many symptoms from other items in a war,
Sellstrom said, [P]hosphorous smoke, tear gas, many of those devices on the
battlefield will affect the lungs, eyes and give you respiratory problems.
Then Sellstrom added, Also in any theater of war, people will claim they
are intoxicated. We saw it in Palestine, Afghanistan and everywhere else.
Now a project manager at the European CBRNE Centre in Umea, Sellstrom did
not respond to e-mail requests from IPS for comment on this article by
deadline. However, his remarks to CBRNe were evidently influenced strongly
by the teams experience in gathering data on several dozen alleged victims
who claimed to have been among the most heavily exposed to Sarin on Aug. 21.
Sellstrom explained to Winfield that the investigating team had sought the
help of the opposition in the area where the attack took place to identify
as many as 80 survivors of the Sarin attack. We thought that if they can
gather 80 people who were affected but still surviving, that it [would be]
clearly indicative that a major event had taken place, he said.
Sellstrom revealed in the interview that the team had chosen 40 people from
the original 80 identified as survivors by the opposition. Those 36 people
described themselves as having had very serious exposure to Sarin. Thirty of
the 36 reported rocket strikes either on or near their homes. The remaining
six said they had gone to a point of impact to help those suffering from the
attack.
The U.N. report provided detailed statistics on the symptoms reported by the
36 individuals and concluded the data were consistent with organophosphate
intoxication. But chemical weapons specialists have identified serious
contradictions in the data that appear to indicate the contrary.
Twenty-eight of the 36 victims nearly four-fifths of the sample said they
had experienced loss of consciousness, according to the Sept. 16 U.N.
report. The second most frequent symptom was difficulty breathing, which was
reported by 22 of the 36, followed by blurred vision, which was suffered by
15 of them. But only five of the 36 reported miosis, or constricted pupils.
That fact is an indication that the exposure to Sarin was actually minimal
or nonexistent for 31 of the 36, or 86 percent of the sample. Miosis is the
most basic and reliable indicator of nerve gas poisoning, according to
chemical weapons literature and specialists who analyzed the report.
As little as four mg of Sarin per cubic meter for just two minutes would
have triggered that physiological response, according to an April 17 email
from UK-based American chemical weapons specialist Dan Kaszeta in April. A
2002 article in the journal Critical Care Medicine put the minimum exposure
necessary to cause miosis at one mg of Sarin per cubic meter for three
minutes.
Yet miosis was the least prevalent symptom among those people claiming to
have been very seriously exposed to Sarin in Syria. Dr. Abbas Faroutan, an
Iranian physician who treated Iranian victims of Iraqi nerve gas attacks,
noted that the data were not logical.
Seven of the 36 people identified as victims told investigators they had
lost a combined total of 39 members of their immediate families who were
killed in buildings they said were either points of impact of the rockets or
only 20 meters (64 feet) away. However, only one of the seven exhibited the
constriction of pupils and only one reported nausea and vomiting.
Despite the paucity of the most fundamental indicator of exposure to Sarin,
31 of the 36 were found to have a trace of Sarin in their blood samples.
That seeming contradiction is explained by the fact that even exposure to an
amount of Sarin too small to cause any symptoms would be detected in the
blood using an extremely sensitive method called fluoride reactivation,
according to Kaszeta.
The U.N. team found that six of the people who claimed serious exposure to
Sarin had no trace of Sarin in their blood at all, indicating that they had
in fact experienced no exposure to Sarin at all. Kaszeta said he had
concluded that the people interviewed and evaluated by the UN didnt have
serious exposure to nerve gas.
The indication that the overwhelming majority in the sample had very little
or no exposure to Sarin was particularly significant, because those in the
sample had been chosen by local opposition authorities as being among the
most serious affected survivors. The data suggest that the Syrian opposition
and its external supporters had vastly exaggerated the scope and severity of
the attack.
In an apparent reference to the questionable data on symptoms collected on
the 36 alleged survivors, Sellstrom told Winfield the investigators need to
be better at differential diagnostics on the intoxication, better medical
markers.
Selstrom also expressed doubt about the numbers of victims said to have been
treated at local hospitals. The U.N. investigators visited two of the three
hospitals in the Damascus suburbs that had treated victims of the attack and
had provided figures for the numbers of victims they had treated.
[T]he figures they provided of people who passed through them was just not
possible, said Sellstrom. It is impossible that they could have turned
over the amount of people they claim they did.
Sellstrom did not refer to the total number of victims claimed by hospital
administrators, but Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) issued a statement last
Aug. 24 that three hospitals near the area of the attack had reported to MSF
that they received approximately 3,600 patients displaying neurotoxic
symptoms in less than three hours on the morning of Wednesday, August 21,
2013. MSF said 355 had died.
Sellstrom repeated his doubts about the total number of victims of Sarin
intoxication and the numbers of patients said to have been treated in
hospitals in a March 11 interview with the website Syria in Crisis
affiliated with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The head of the Syria investigation had also investigated the use of
chemical weapons by Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war for the U.N. He had been
Chief Inspector for UNSCOM, the U.N. Commission on Iraqs compliance with
the ban on weapons of mass destruction, and head of its successor, UNMOVIC.
He has apparently questioned the larger narrative of Syrian government
culpability for the attack as well. In an interview with the Wall Street
Journal after the release of the follow-up December U.N. investigation
report, Sellstrom said he believes both sides in the Syrian conflict had the
opportunity and the capability to carry out chemical weapons attacks.
