Syrian General: Assad Ordered Me to Gas People

In an interview with The Telegraph in late September, Sakat claimed to have his own intelligence that the Syrian president is evading the terms of a Russian-brokered deal to destroy his chemical weapons by transferring some of his stocks to his allies—Hezbollah, in Lebanon and Iran. As chief scientific officer in the army's fifth division, Sakat ran chemical weapons operations in the country's southern Deraa province, where the uprising began in March 2011. He told The Telegraph he witnessed the first uses of violence against peaceful protesters—and the first use of “dirty tricks,” placing weapons in the mosque where the protests started to suggest the protesters were armed.

Syrian chemical weaponwww.wikipedia.com/Brown Moses (Eliot Higgins) Gen. Sakat said the regime wanted to “annihilate” the opposition using any means, and said he received his first orders to use chemical weapons in October last year. On three occasions, he said he was told to use a mixture of phosgene and two other chlorine-based agents against civilian targets in Sheikh Masqeen, Herak, and Busra, all rebel-held districts. However, under cover of darkness, he said he had replaced the canisters containing the chemicals with ones containing water mixed with dilute bleach which would give off a similar chlorine smell.

At first, his trick worked. “They were completely convinced that this was the same poisonous material,” he told the Sunday Telegraph in an interview. “In this way I saved hundreds of lives of children and others.” But after the third occasion, in January, his bosses became suspicious at the lack of deaths in his “attacks” and he began to plot his escape to Jordan, where he has been based since the spring.

General Sakat said that even before the deal to disarm Syria of its chemical weapons was finalized, “they (Assad regime) were already mobilizing them to move to Lebanon and even Iraq. There have already been weapons handed over to Hezbollah.” Gen. Sakat told The Telegraph a team of his activists had observed a column of more than 20 vehicles, some identifiable as belonging to the program, heading towards the Lebanese border. He also alleged that other stocks were being transferred through Iraq to Iran.