Syrian authorities have arrested a former police officer accused of drug weapons | Human Rights Issues

Former soldier Ahmed Habib Ali is accused of overseeing the production of sarin gas bombs.

Syrian authorities have arrested an alleged former chemical weapons expert who oversaw a sarin gas stockpile and chemical weapons production in former President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

The Interior Ministry named him on Wednesday as former soldier Ahmed Habib Ali, calling him a “chemical weapons expert”.

Ali “was responsible for the storage of sarin gas and the production of chemicals within Unit 417”, a chemical weapons center near Damascus, the ministry said, adding that he was “one of the officers in charge of the production of 20 bombs filled with sarin gas, each weighing 250kg (550lb), which were used in the 2013 fighting in the cities and villages of Syria 2013.

His arrest comes just over a week after his arrest in Syria restored to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The watchdog revoked the right to vote in Syria in 2021, after it was discovered that its army used sarin and chlorine gas on its own people.

The deadliest attack took place in August 2013. The Syrian army is accused of bombing terrorist areas, killing more than 1,400 men, women and children, according to US law enforcement and rights groups.

At the height of the civil war, and facing the threat of a US strike, al-Assad’s government agreed to hand over its weapons. Despite this promise, Damascus was accused of four more sarin and chlorine attacks on opposition towns between 2014 and 2017.

Ali’s arrest is part of a series of arrests of al-Assad-era officials. In April, judges in Syria opened public trials against former officials, and other charges related to war crimes linked to the 2011 uprising and its suppression.

Since the fall of al-Assad in December 2024, authorities have arrested dozens of people for crimes committed during the 13-year civil war.