Secretary of the Syrian Opposition’s (SOC) political committee, Abdul Majeed Barakat, welcomed the new US designations of three Assad regimes’ senior military officers for their involvement in chemical attacks on civilians. He stressed the need to expand these sanctions to target all Assad regime officials involved in war crimes in Syria.
Barakat pointed to the importance of imposing more sanctions on officials of the Assad regime and its allies. He pointed out that the SOC’s Caesar Act Follow-up Committee is working with US officials in charge of implementing the Caesar Act in order to track down those involved in crimes, expose them and impose penalties on them.
The United States is banning entry to three Syrian military officials for their alleged involvement in chemical weapons attacks constituting gross human rights violations, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday.
“In August 2013, the Syrian Artillery and Missile Directorate of the Syrian Armed Forces launched rockets carrying the nerve agent sarin, a deadly chemical, on Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, killing at least 1,400 people, many of them children… The Department of State is designating three Syrian regime military officials involved in these airstrikes,” Blinken said in a statement.
In addition to the US sanctions, the European sanctions regime against Assad regime officials took effect in 2018, and aims to combat the spread and use of chemical weapons. The sanctions were scheduled to remain in place until October 16, 2020. (Source: SOC’s media department)
