UN Official Accuses Saudi Prince of Masterminding Damascus Chemical Attack
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A UN official in charge of the case on the chemical weapons use in Syria accused the Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who is the country's intelligence chief, of being the mastermind behind the chemical weapons attack in a Damascus suburb on August 21.
“The Saudi security chief is responsible for the Ghouta chemical attack, but no one talks about the matter for fear of death,” wrote the Lebanese Dam Press daily in its latest edition, quoting the official who talked to it on the condition of anonymity.
Bandar bin Sultan who is currently one of the major supporters of the armed groups in Syria had previously claimed that the balance of power would change in the coming few months in favor of the opponents of the Syrian government.
The UN official has also, in his interview with the Lebanese daily, stressed that the balance of power was well in favor of the Syrian army at the time of Ghouta attack, which left no logical justification for them to resort to such an attack, while some regional security services were determined to end the Syrian army’s progress in liberation of more areas.
While the US and some of its allies blame the chemical attack on the Syrian government, a charge Damascus has strongly denied, there are some who insist that the attack was a sort of false flag operation carried out by rebels to draw the US to war.
And some say that Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan had supplied chemical weapons to untrained rebels and that an accidental release in tunnels where the weapons were being stored led to the deaths.
Seyed Hassan Nasrallah, too, in his Monday night address called on Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Arab states in the Persian Gulf region to review their stances towards Syria and put an end to hostile moves against the crisis-torn country.
He called on them to drop hostility and care about the nations of the region, (and) to think about saving Syria and saving regional nations and blocking seditions through political solution in Syria.
Syria has been gripped by deadly unrest since March 2011.
A very large number of the militants operating inside Syria are mercenaries from other countries. According to reports, Western powers and their regional allies, especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, are supporting the militants operating inside Syria.