President Bashar al-Assad gave a rare interview in English today, as world leaders continued to criticise a suspected chemical attack on a rebel-held area of Syria.
Theresa May said the British government believes it is “highly likely” that an air strike on the village of Khan Sheikhun in Idlib Province on April 3 was the work of the Assad regime.
Donald Trump has already made it clear he holds the Syrian government responsible for the attack, which was widely reported to have killed more than 70 people including young children.
The US president ordered a Tomahawk missile strike on the regime’s Shayrat airbase in response.
President Assad made a number of questionable claims during the exclusive AFP interview, during which he repeatedly denied Syria’s responsibility for the deaths in Khan Sheikhun.

“You have a lot of fake videos now… We don’t know whether those dead children were killed in Khan Sheikhun. Were they dead at all?”
President Assad appears to be casting doubt on whether an attack on Khan Sheikhun happened at all.
He said in the interview: “Definitely, 100 percent for us, it’s fabrication.
“Our impression is that the West, mainly the United States, is hand-in-glove with the terrorists. They fabricated the whole story in order to have a pretext for the attack.”
Oddly, this contradicts previous statements on Khan Sheikhun made by Assad’s allies in Moscow and by members of his own government.
Representatives of Russia and Syria have previously stated that an airstrike on the village did take place last week.
And although many of the details were disputed, they did not dispute the presence of chemical weapons at the scene.
A day after the attack, Major General Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, gave a statement saying Syrian planes had hit a rebel chemical weapons stockpile.
The following day, Assad’s foreign minister Walid Muallem also referred to an “airstrike by the Syrian army on an ammunition depot of al-Nusra terrorists with chemical weapons inside it”.
There is a disagreement about the timing. Russian and Syrian government sources put the attack at after 11am local time, whereas local eyewitnesses said it happened hours earlier.
But initially, neither Syria nor Russia denied that people were at risk of exposure to chemical weapons.
The story was that this was an airstrike with conventional weapons, and chemicals at the scene belonged to rebel groups.
Strangely, President Assad appears to be casting doubt now on whether there was a deadly attack of any kind.
Were the children “dead at all”?
A number of videos were posted apparently showing victims from the area suffering the after-effects of chemical poisoning.
Some of the videos are gathered, along with translations, on this page on the citizen journalist site Bellingcat. A warning: some of the footage is distressing.
Doctors at the scene highlight similar symptoms among the patients: they are unresponsive, their pupils are constricted, and they do not react when torches are shone in their eyes.
People sympathetic to the regime tend to doubt evidence gathered from rescuers and medics in rebel-held areas.
But a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) medical team said that they saw similar symptoms in patients brought to a hospital near the Turkish border from Khan Sheikhoun.
We haven’t seen any compelling evidence that any of the video footage from Khan Sheikhun has been faked, but as it happens, we don’t need to rely exclusively on video evidence anyway.
Reporters at Channel 4 News spoke to individuals in the area who suffered the after-effects of poisoning and saw the same symptoms in other people. People told us that they had lost family members, identifying themselves and their relatives.
The Guardian newspaper sent a reporter called Kareem Shaheen to Khan Sheikhun two days after the attack.
He filed an article that included interviews with witnesses, including a man identified as Abdulhamid al-Yousef (pictured below) who lost his wife and twin baby daughters in the attack.

The Telegraph actually carried a photograph of the same man cradling the bodies of the baby girls shortly before he buried them in a mass grave.
Shaheen also filed photographs of freshly-dug graves in the village, said to contain the bodies of 20 victims.
Local doctors gave detailed accounts to journalists of treating victims, describing symptoms which experts said were consistent with nerve agent poisoning.
Save the Children told FactCheck that trusted local partners had given them specific details of three children under six who were taken from Khan Sheikhun to a local hospital suffering from symptoms consistent with neurotoxin poisoning.
It is not clear whether these children survived, but there were first-hand reports from medical staff working on the ground that other infants with similar symptoms had certainly died, the charity said.
Other international organisations with partners on the ground in Syria, including the World Health Organization, have similarly put their concern on record.
The WHO said the likelihood that this was a chemical attack was born out by lack of external injuries, respiratory distress and “additional signs consistent with exposure to organophosphorus chemicals, a category of chemicals that includes nerve agents”.
Several academic experts have gone on record as saying that the likely culprit in this case is sarin – the nerve gas invented by the Nazis – and that the Syrian regime is more likely than any rebel group to have the capacity to launch a sarin attack.
Chemical weapons experts also say it is implausible that conventional bombs falling on a stash of sarin would have spread the deadly gas without destroying it.

“The only information the world has had until this moment is published by al-Qaeda.”
It’s true that the attack site is in territory controlled by Islamist militants, some linked to the al-Qaeda terror group. But it’s not true that the only evidence of a chemical attack comes from local rebels.
As we have seen, independent journalists have been able to analyse images of the attack, using geo-location and other tools to verify that it did in fact happen.
And international humanitarian organisations have relayed information from trusted local partners who work in the area where the attacks took place.
The British delegation to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said UK scientists have tested samples from Khan Sheikhun and the samples “tested positive for the nerve agent sarin, or a sarin-like substance”.
Turkish officials said they conducted post-mortems on victims and also found evidence of sarin.
“We gave up our arsenal a few years ago. Even if we have them, we wouldn’t use them.”
Syria was certainly supposed to have given up its chemical weapons stockpile in 2013, but there is widespread suspicion that the regime held on to some poisons.
An investigation by the OPCW and the UN found that Syrian forces dropped chemical weapons on rebel forces in 2014 and 2015, after the regime agreed to destroy its stocks. In both attacks, the chemical used was thought to be chlorine.
The same report also accused the so-called Islamic State of launching an attack with mustard gas.
Human Rights Watch accused regime forces of dropping chlorine on residential areas of Aleppo at least eight times in November and December last year.
Lies, lies,propaganda & more lies! You should hang your heads in shame.
Never before a more one sided ,ill informed load of clap-trap dressed as news? How dare you?
I wrote to our P.M and my local MP on the day the U.S launched 59 cruise missiles in retaliation for this fake news outlining what was really going on in Syria. Today Mr Assad has himself explained exactly and honestly what has transpired recently, something that you appear to have given a very brief account of course countering with the P.Ms position unchanged.
Well of course we have the visual proof dont we. Your friendly Allepo gang of doctors cum film makers. The ones that sit perfectly healthy (covered in dust & ketchup)kids up in the back of flood-lit ambulances. Did they take the £1 million worth of gear in the back of the £100k Mercedes. I think they did, except now they feature children covered in oil and blowing fairy liquid bubbles. The photos & videos I have seen show perfectly radiant kids with bright eyes & healthy faces either asleep or being pushed back down by the so called doctors. One commentator says that now the hospital is being bombed….wait for the explosion….we hear a hissssss as someone sprays a can of oily gunk onto the camera lens and the cameraman duly staggers around the room……Seriously???
I ask many questions…WHY?
Why do we side with terrorists & traitors aided by the U.S who only seek to destroy this once lovely country?
Why to we turn lies, propaganda and hearsay into facts?
Why do we totally refute all reason & honest statements from legitimate governments in Syria and Russia?
Why, why, why & why again?
You do not have an answer…but Why?
Frederick Alan Hamer
It’s about time we challenged the deception. I’ve never seen such blatant propaganda masquerading as news. I watched this channel edit Trump recounting how he told the Chinese premier how, while enjoying a truly wonderful chocolate dessert, he authorised the firing of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles. This channel 7pm news then edited the part where Trump said they were bombing Iraq! The reporter had to correct him. THIS CHANNEL EDITED THAT. BEYOND DISGRACEFUL!!
Frederick Alan Hamer who presumably does not live in Syria but more behind the protection of his computer screen. How dare you. And how dare you claim you know either. Western intervention is not the way forward. But defending Bashar Al Assad as some kind of anti-western hero is just vile. He has continuously slaughtered more Syrians than any player in the war. He opened his prisons, letting out jihadists at the start of the revolution to create an us or them situation…and he is quite willing to kill and destroy large parts of that beautiful land so that his family can stay power. How utterly fascist and murderous is that. Enjoy the safety of your computer.
How odd, again Ch4 is fully supportive of UK Government interests in the region? Surprised you allow comments.
That western governments are ready to seize upon falsified intelligence and potentially staged revents as pretext for military action against a sovereign state may not tell us definitively who is responsible for the attack, but it speaks volumes about western integrity and motives.
https://www.scribd.com/document/344995943/Report-by-White-House-Alleging-Proof-of-Syria-as-the-Perpetrator-of-the-Nerve-Agent-Attack-in-Khan-Shaykhun-on-April-4-2017#download
Because some countries have leaders who gain power only to be bullies. These people lie constantly and repress their people. They won’t even provide their tax return to prove their innocence.
Then they give knee-jerk responses to other countries leaders when they think they can capitalize politically. Hope this answers your question,
The following addendum to the report above shows how the alleged impact site was tampered with. Just when, exactly, will western media stop passing off the politically motivated claims of warmongering leaders as good coin?
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/04/addendum-dr-theodore-postols-assessment-white-house-report-syria-chemical-attack.html
@ Frederick Alan Hamer: Thank you for taking the time to type the most preposterous and ridiculous ‘comments’, accusations (against the most respected and un-biased News Programme in the U.K. – alongside your utter inability to see (or rather, make excuses for), one of the mostt callous, inhuman and murderous Dictators the World has seen in at least 60 years. “Why?, why, why, why, why, why, why, but Why? You ask. Possibly Bashar Assad is hoping his 6 years of Genocide against the babies, toddlers, children, teenagers, adults, & the elderly that he has waged war upon by every method possible – including chlorine and sarin etc. (I take it that you are an expert in such chemicals, and you are more qualified than all the experts mentioned in the Factcheck article – & as un-biased as the MSF Medical Teams). Returning to your “Why? why, why (ad infinitum) – It could be that he wishes to reach the milestone of a Decade of murder, and take his place alongside such previous ‘luminaries’ such as Pol Pot and Idi Amin (neither of which used ‘cluster’ (multi-explosive & multi-shrapnel) bombs) – also a ‘favourite’ of Assad.
To finish, don’t be waiting, sat on a chair by your letterbox… Expecting a letter from Theresa. Sorry to burst your Fairy Liquid bubbles, but i very highly doubt she’ll clap eyes on it – nor your local M.P. – Whoever does along each way though, will, i’m sure – be able to gain some mirth (amongst the desecration of a Country & its People – causing what must be by now, an even larger migration of a Population than that of WW2, by any means possible, they are so desperate. Remember the dead child washed up on a beach do you ‘Frederick’?), at your description of Syrian & Russian reason (?) and honest statements from two ‘legitimate’ Governments. Tell me…. When will these two ‘honest’ Leaders be holding free and fair Elections? Especially one that has his Political Opponent’s and critics thrown into Jail – or worse – by use of an umbrella perchance? And both with State Regulated TV – any channel you want – as long as it’s the only one there is. Ever read ‘1984’, ‘Frederick’?(?).
Syrian forces have been successfully taking back control points of late. Why would Assad use chemical weapons after making significant progress and risk US atacks? It doesnt make Sense.
Hundreds of civilians were killed during two attacks in Damascus’ suburbs in August 2013.
Rocket debris and witness accounts suggest the likely cause was the chemical weapon nerve agent sarin.
This is in clear violation of international law which bans the use of chemical weapons during armed conflict, never mind use against civilians.
Signs and symptoms produced by organophosphate compounds such as sarin, and mustard gas, chlorine gas, and VX, have all been observed in civilians caught up in the Syrian conflict, resulting in many appalling deaths.
Chlorine gas cannot be included on the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) list of chemical weapons because of its industrial application, but Syria is party to the 1925 Geneva Gas Protocol.
It doesn’t matter whether or not there aren’t enough swimming pools in Syria to justify storing large quantities ‘possession with intent’ cannot be demonstrated. Thus, future use of chlorine as a chemical weapon is all too conceivable so monitoring chlorine levels is useless.
Mustard gas serves no purpose beyond chemical munitions and its effects range from mildly toxic to lethal depending on degree of exposure. It can kill within a few hours or take up to a few days.
Trump throwing his ‘Presidential’ weight around by dropping a bomb in Syria will not help. Any case for military intervention has to be water-tight and not decided on a whim. This isn’t “MechWarrior 4” and chocolate cake.
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2254 is a charter set up to help implement political transition, but in Syria it is looking less likely that this will happen following a meeting in Geneva last month where Syria’s warring factions could not come to a peaceful agreement. The UN is impotent so another strategy has to be thought out.
As the world knows Assad is not averse to using chemical weapons on his own people, but to make a case against the regime the evidence must be incontestable; prove a clear desecration of humanitarian law.
Great article, very true and informative
thanks
Well done and thanks channel 4 for this excellent article which shows Assad and his Russian allies for liars and scumbags which they are.
Also a particular massive thank you to John A for his truly magnificent destruction of the desperate deluded ramblings of Frederick Alan Hamer. If this wasn’t so tragic we could laugh.