Submitted by: Steve Lefemine
German Foreign Intelligence head informs
select German legislators:
Intercepted communications indicate
Assad did not order or approve
alleged sarin gas attack on August 21
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Excerpts [ "S.L." - emphasis added
]:
"The report in Bild am Sonntag, which is a widely read and
influential national Sunday newspaper,
reported that the head of the
German Foreign Intelligence agency, Gerhard Schindler,
last week told a select group of German lawmakers that intercepted
communications
had convinced German intelligence officials that Assad did not order or
approve what
is believed to be a sarin gas attack on Aug. 21
that killed hundreds of people in Damascus’
eastern suburbs."
continued...
"The article added that
German intelligence does not believe Assad sanctioned the
alleged attack on August 21."
continued...
"Assad told American journalist Charlie Rose in an interview to
be broadcast in its entirety
Monday night on PBS that “there has
been no evidence that I used chemical weapons against
my own people.” "
continued...
McClatchy.com
Intercepts caught Assad rejecting requests to use chemical weapons,
German paper says
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/09/09/201515/intercepts-caught-assad-rejecting.html#.Ui82OOukRFQ
Posted on Monday, September 9, 2013
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Infowars.com
German paper: Intercepts caught Assad rejecting
requests to use chemical weapons
http://www.infowars.com/intercepts-caught-assad-rejecting-requests-to-use-chemical-weapons-german-paper-says/
Matthew Schofield
McClatchy
September 10, 2013
Syrian President Bashar Assad has repeatedly rejected requests from his
field commanders for approval to use chemical weapons,
according to a report this weekend in a German newspaper.
The report in Bild am Sonntag, which is a widely read and influential
national Sunday newspaper, reported that the
head of the
German Foreign Intelligence agency, Gerhard Schindler, last week told a
select group of German lawmakers that
intercepted communications had convinced German intelligence officials
that Assad did not order or approve what
is believed to be a sarin gas attack on Aug. 21 that killed
hundreds of people in Damascus’ eastern suburbs.
The Obama administration has blamed the attack on Assad. The evidence
against Assad was described over the weekend as
common sense by White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough on CNN’s
“State of the Union.”
Read more
This article was posted: Tuesday, September 10, 2013 at 10:18 am
Tags: domestic
news
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All rights reserved.
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McClatchy.com
Intercepts caught Assad rejecting requests to use
chemical weapons, German paper says
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/09/09/201515/intercepts-caught-assad-rejecting.html#.Ui82OOukRFQ
Posted on Monday, September 9, 2013
[ "S.L." - emphasis added, portion omitted
]
BERLIN Syrian President Bashar Assad has repeatedly rejected
requests from his field commanders for approval
to use chemical weapons, according to a report this weekend in a German
newspaper.
The report in Bild am Sonntag, which is a widely read and influential
national Sunday newspaper, reported that the
head
of the German Foreign Intelligence agency, Gerhard Schindler, last week
told a select group of German lawmakers
that intercepted communications had convinced German intelligence
officials that Assad did not order or approve
what is believed to be a sarin gas attack on Aug. 21 that
killed hundreds of people in Damascus’ eastern suburbs.
The Obama administration has blamed the attack on Assad. The evidence
against Assad was described over the weekend
as common sense by White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough on CNN’s
"State of the Union."
“The material was used in the eastern suburbs of Damascus that have been
controlled by the opposition for some time,”
he said. “It was delivered by rockets, rockets that we know the Assad
regime has, and we have no indication that the
opposition has.”
Russia has questioned that logic, announcing last week that in July it
filed a 100-page long “technical and scientific”
report on an alleged March 19 chemical weapons attack on a suburb of
Aleppo that it says implicates rebel fighters.
A U.N. team dispatched to Syria to investigate the March 19 attack
was sent to the scene of the Aug. 21 incident.
The samples it collected are currently being analyzed in Europe at labs
certified by the Organization for the Prohibition
of Chemical Weapons, the international agency that monitors compliance
with chemical weapons bans.
The German intelligence briefing to lawmakers described by Bild am
Sonntag fits neither narrative precisely. The newspaper’s
article said that on numerous occasions in recent months, the German
intelligence ship named Oker, which is off the
Syrian coast, has intercepted communications indicating that field
officers have contacted the Syrian presidential palace
seeking permission to use chemical weapons and
have been turned down.
The article added that German intelligence does not believe Assad
sanctioned the alleged attack on August 21.
Last week, the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, also
citing a briefing for German legislators, said that the Oker had
intercepted a phone call between a commander from the Lebanese militant
group Hezbollah and an official at an unidentified
Iranian embassy saying that Assad had ordered the Aug. 21 chemical attack
out of anger. The Hezbollah commander called
the attack a “huge mistake,” Der Spiegel said. It was not clear if the
two news accounts were based on the same or different
briefings.
Assad told American journalist Charlie Rose in an interview to be
broadcast in its entirety Monday night on PBS
that “there has been no evidence that I used
chemical weapons against my own people.”
continued...
European foreign ministers on Saturday issued a statement calling
the Aug. 21 attack a “war crime,” but said nothing should be done
without U.N. approval. New opinion polls over the weekend in France,
Germany and Great Britain showed strong disapproval of military action
in Syria. The British poll, done for The Sunday Telegraph, indicated only
19 percent of the population backs the idea of military action with
the United States, while 63 percent oppose it. The polls in France and
Germany showed similar margins of opposition.
Meanwhile, a new tabulation of the dead from the Aug. 21 incident raised
more questions about Obama administration officials’ account
of what took place.
The Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies, an anti-Assad group, said
that it had been able to document 678 dead from the attacks,
including 106 children and 157 women. The report said 51 of the dead, or
7 percent, were fighters from the Free Syrian Army, the designation
used to describe rebels that are affiliated with the Supreme Military
Council, which the U.S. backs.
The report said that the organization was certain that more than 1,600
died in the attack, but that it had not been able to confirm
the higher number.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said 1,429 people died Aug. 21,
included 426 children, but has not said how the United States
obtained the figures. Other estimates have ranged from a low of “at least
281” by the French government to 502, including “tens”
of rebel fighters and about 100 children, by the Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights, a London-based group that tracks violence in
Syria.
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