A former Syrian army chief has alleged that a 2014 shipment of chemicals from a factory in the Swiss city of Basel, intended for medical purposes, was used to make chemical weapons. The SonntagsZeitung newspaper quoted on Sunday ex-brigadier general Zaher al-Saket claiming that five tonnes of isopropanol and 280 kilogrammes of Diethylamine “without question went into the production of chemical weapons”. Both chemicals are dual-use, i.e. they can be found in daily and military products: isopropanol, for example, is found in disinfectants, cleaning agents, paints and varnishes, but is also a major component of the type of gas used in suspected chemical attacks by the Assad regime. The shipment in question was already reported in 2018, when Swiss public broadcaster RTS revealed the export had been authorised in 2014, at a time when there were serious accusations of chemical warfare against Assad’s army. At the time, the Swiss Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco), the Swiss...
