ISIS Making Chemical Weapons: Says Watchdog
MEP: A global watchdog organization announced Tuesday that Islamic State (IS or Daesh) terrorist group are likely to have been making chemical weapons of its own in Syria and neighboring Iraq.
The “possibility” is just their reluctance to confirm things they haven’t been formally authorized to confirm, as IS has bragged about their capacity to manufacture chemical weapons in multiple videos, and they have repeatedly launched such strikes, sickening large numbers of civilians and combatants.
The head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Ahmet Uzumcu, said his body’s fact-finding teams have found evidence of the use of Sulphur mustard in attacks in the two countries.
“Although they could not attribute this to IS… there are strong suspicions that they may have used it (chemical weapons),” Uzumcu told AFP, using the alternative name for the extremism group.
“Secondly the suspicions are that they may have produced it themselves, which is extremely worrying,” Uzumcu said on the sidelines of a three-day conference at the OPCW’s Hague-based headquarters.
“It proves that they have the technology, know-how and also access to the materials which might be used for the production of chemical weapons,” Uzumcu said on the sidelines of a three-day conference in the Hague.
CIA director John Brennan in February told CBS News that IS fighters had the capability to make small quantities of chlorine and mustard gas.
Uzumcu did not point to any specific attacks, but last month IS mounted a deadly gas attack against Syrian troops at a government-controlled airbase outside the divided eastern city of Deir Ezzor, according to the SANA state news agency.
ISIS has captured a large number of empty chemical weapons shells over the course of the war in Iraq and Syria, remnants of those nations’ since dismantled programs, and has developed the capability to produce some more primitive chemicals to deploy in such weapons.
