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NGOs file case in Sweden against Assad’s chemical attacks

April 20, 2021 at 12:42 pm

A Syrian child receives treatment after Assad Regime forces carried out a chemical attack in Idlib, Syria on 4 April 2017 [Bahjat Najar/Anadolu Agency]

Four NGOs have filed a criminal complaint in Sweden against members of the Syrian government for deadly chemical weapons attacks in 2013 and 2017, AFP reports.

According to the news site, the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), Civil Rights Defenders, Syrian Archive (SA), and the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) accuse Syrian officials of chemical attacks using sarin gas, in Khan Sheikhun in Idlib province in 2017 and Ghouta near the capital Damascus in 2013.

After submitting the criminal complaint in Sweden, Human Rights Watch’s European Media Director Andrew Stroehlein published a chronology on chemical attacks in Syria since 2013.

“Today in Sweden, on the eve of the OPCW States Parties Conference, Syrian survivors and civil society NGOs filed a criminal complaint against high-ranking officials in the Syrian government,” the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression said on Twitter.

On 21 August 2013, more than 1,400 men, women, and children were killed in Syria’s Eastern Ghouta.

The Syrian government is also said to be behind an attack on the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhun that killed dozens of people in April 2017.

READ: Chemical weapons watchdog, Aleppo, Idlib investigations inconclusive