‘NO one has investigated what happened that day in Khan Sheikoun,’ said President Assad yesterday.
‘As you know Khan Sheikoun is under the control of the Al-Nusra front which is a branch of Al-Qaeda, so the only word that we have had has been published by an Al-Qaeda branch. We have no other information,’ added Assad.
Assad continued: ‘We do not know if the whole picture or videos that have been seen are true or have been fabricated. That is why we asked for an investigation into what happened in Khan Sheikoun.
‘The second Al-Qaeda source said that the attack happened at 6-6:30 in the morning, while the Syrian attack was around noon, 11:30 till 12. So they are talking about two different stories or events.’
Speaking to AFP, Assad was asked, ‘Did you authorise the chemical attack on Khan Sheikoun?’
He responded: ‘We do not have any chemical weapons. We gave up all our arsenal two years ago.
‘Even if we had them, we would not use them and we have never used our chemical arsenal in our history. Our impression is that the West, the United States is hand in glove with the terrorists.
‘They fabricated the whole story in order to have a pretext for the attack. It wasn’t an attack because of what happened in Khan Sheikoun, this was one event, stage one – the play that we saw on the social networking and the propaganda.
‘The stage two is the military attack, that is what we believe is what is happening now. Two days, forty-eight hours between the play and the attacks, and no investigation, no concrete evidence about anything, the only thing was allegations and propaganda and an air strike.’
He added: ‘This play which they staged does not hold together.’ He concluded: ‘It is a 100 per cent fabrication.’
