“We don’t have any chemical weapons. We gave up our arsenal three years ago. Even if we have them, we wouldn’t use them, and we have never used our chemical arsenal in our history,” said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in an interview aired Thursday with the AFP.
Assad described last week’s gas attack in Syria as a false flag coordinated by America and Islamic terrorists to create a “pretext” for President Donald Trump’s decision to strike a military air base in Syria:
“As I said, the only source is al-Qaeda. We cannot take it seriously. But our impression 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. It wasn’t an attack because of what happened in Khan Shiekhoun. It’s one event, it’s the stage one, the play that we saw on the social networking and on TVs, the propaganda, and the stage two is the military attack. That’s what we believe is happening because it’s only a few days … between the play and the attacks.”
Assad described videos of the attack as “fake:”
The allegation, itself, was from al-Qaeda and al-Nusra Front, so we don’t have to investigate who [made the allegation of the gas attack]. About the attack, as I said, it’s not clear whether it happened, or not. How can you verify a video? You have a lot of fake videos, now. And you have the proof that those videos were fake, like the White Helmets, for example. They are al-Qaeda, they are al-Nusra Front, who shaved their beards, wore white hats, and appeared as humanitarian heroes, which is not the case. The same people were killing civilian soldiers, and you have the proof on the internet. So, the same thing for that chemical attack, we don’t know whether those dead children were the kids in Khan Sheikhoun. Were they dead at all? Who committed the attack if there was an attack? You have no information, at all. Nothing at all. Not investigation.
Assad described the attack as “100% fabrication.”
Watch a brief segment of the interview below, or a fuller segment here.
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