A disarmament expert from Argentina has been appointed to head an independent panel tasked with determining who is behind chemical weapons attacks in Syria, the United Nations said Tuesday.
Virginia Gamba, who has been the director of the U.N. disarmament office for the past two years, will work with two deputies during the one-year mission to assign responsibility for the use of the banned deadly agents.
The U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution in August setting up the joint investigation in a rare display of unity over how to address the four-year war.
President Khoja earlier welcomed all efforts to prosecute all those responsible for all chemical weapons attacks in Syria. He affirms that almost two years after the horrible massacre that left more than 1,400 victims dead and thousands more injured in Eastern Ghouta near Damascus in August 2013, the perpetrators are still at large committing more atrocities in all parts of Syria including more than 120 chlorine attacks on Syrian civilians since then.
“Resolution 2235 should have not ignored the fact that the real criminals are officials in the Syrian regime, including Bashar al-Assad, who had the capability and full authority to order the attacks and who later only partially handed the crime weapons to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) under pressure paused by the adoption of UNSC Resolution 2118,” Khoja added.
“The UNSC was obliged under resolution 2118 to impose tougher measures against the Syrian regime under Chapter VII of UN Charter as the continuous use of chemical weapons on a smaller scale pose credible concerns that the conditions outlined in the resolution were not fully met.”
He emphasizes that it is an International responsibility to protect civilians in Syria from the atrocities of the regime and it looks forward to the new mechanism to bring to conclusion this painful and inhumane chapter in the Syrian people suffering if faith in the UN-led political solution is to be restored.
Today UN Security Council adopted resolution 2235 (2015) giving the greenlight for the establishment of a Joint Investigative Mechanism to identify those responsible for the use of chemical weapons in Syria. (Source: Syrian Coalition + Agencies)
