Disir
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For more than 16 months, Chancellor Angela Merkel's government has been in possession of a list containing the names of German companies thought to have helped Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and his father Hafis build up Syria's chemical weapons arsenal over the course of several decades. Ultimately, it became one of the largest such arsenals in the world.
The German government, a coalition between Merkel's conservatives and Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel's center-left Social Democrats (SPD), received the list from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The OPCW was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013 for its "extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons." Together with experts from the United Nations, the OPCW organized and carried out the destruction of Syrian chemical weapons last year.
Berlin immediately classified the list and has since kept it under lock and key. The government says that releasing the names would "significantly impair foreign policy interests and thus the welfare of the Federal Republic of Germany." It also argues that doing so would be akin to releasing "trade secrets" and as such would violate the German constitution.
It is an astonishing justification when one considers what Assad's German suppliers enabled the dictator to do. Over the years, the Syrians produced and stored poison gas weapons with an explosive power of more than 1,500 megatons. Among the weapons was the nerve gas sarin, which disrupts neurotransmitters leading to tortuous cramping and suffocation. More than 1,400 people have been killed by poisonous gas during the ongoing civil war in Syria, though it has not been conclusively proven whether the chemical weapons were deployed by the Syrian army or by opposition militias.
Foreign Ministry files make it clear that Berlin had indications that German companies may have been involved in chemical weapons production long before the OPCW delivered its list. The Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Institute for Contemporary History), which is funded by the government, regularly publishes important documents after the standard 30-year embargo has expired. The most recently published inventory, stemming from 1984, included a document that the government may have accidentally released. It includes the names of companies suspected of supplying the Syrian chemical weapons program, including the glass producer Schott, laboratory equipment producer Kolb, technology company Heraeus, the former Hoechst subsidiary Riedel-de Haën, pharmaceutical company Merck and the company Gerrit van Delden.
Zero Interest
The paper is a memo relating to the Dec. 6, 1984 visit of the then-Israeli Ambassador to Germany Yitzhak Ben-Ari to a deputy section head in the German Foreign Ministry. Ben-Ari presented the Germans with "intelligence service findings" indicating that since the mid-1970s, scientists had been seeking to produce chemical weapons for Syria "disguised as agricultural and medical research." The ambassador said that the chemistry department of the Centre d'Etudes et des Recherches Scientifiques in Damascus, a research center that received funding from UNESCO, led the top secret program.
Ben-Ari said that a pilot facility had already been built and that, in 1982, Syria had signed contracts with European companies relating to three production lines. Ben-Ari believed that by 1985, Syria would have the capacity to produce 700 kilograms (1,543 pounds) of sarin -- enough to kill several million people.
The Foreign Ministry promised to investigate.
German Companies Suspected of Aiding Syrian Chemical Weapons Program - SPIEGEL ONLINE
Why hide the companies?
The German government, a coalition between Merkel's conservatives and Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel's center-left Social Democrats (SPD), received the list from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The OPCW was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013 for its "extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons." Together with experts from the United Nations, the OPCW organized and carried out the destruction of Syrian chemical weapons last year.
Berlin immediately classified the list and has since kept it under lock and key. The government says that releasing the names would "significantly impair foreign policy interests and thus the welfare of the Federal Republic of Germany." It also argues that doing so would be akin to releasing "trade secrets" and as such would violate the German constitution.
It is an astonishing justification when one considers what Assad's German suppliers enabled the dictator to do. Over the years, the Syrians produced and stored poison gas weapons with an explosive power of more than 1,500 megatons. Among the weapons was the nerve gas sarin, which disrupts neurotransmitters leading to tortuous cramping and suffocation. More than 1,400 people have been killed by poisonous gas during the ongoing civil war in Syria, though it has not been conclusively proven whether the chemical weapons were deployed by the Syrian army or by opposition militias.
Foreign Ministry files make it clear that Berlin had indications that German companies may have been involved in chemical weapons production long before the OPCW delivered its list. The Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Institute for Contemporary History), which is funded by the government, regularly publishes important documents after the standard 30-year embargo has expired. The most recently published inventory, stemming from 1984, included a document that the government may have accidentally released. It includes the names of companies suspected of supplying the Syrian chemical weapons program, including the glass producer Schott, laboratory equipment producer Kolb, technology company Heraeus, the former Hoechst subsidiary Riedel-de Haën, pharmaceutical company Merck and the company Gerrit van Delden.
Zero Interest
The paper is a memo relating to the Dec. 6, 1984 visit of the then-Israeli Ambassador to Germany Yitzhak Ben-Ari to a deputy section head in the German Foreign Ministry. Ben-Ari presented the Germans with "intelligence service findings" indicating that since the mid-1970s, scientists had been seeking to produce chemical weapons for Syria "disguised as agricultural and medical research." The ambassador said that the chemistry department of the Centre d'Etudes et des Recherches Scientifiques in Damascus, a research center that received funding from UNESCO, led the top secret program.
Ben-Ari said that a pilot facility had already been built and that, in 1982, Syria had signed contracts with European companies relating to three production lines. Ben-Ari believed that by 1985, Syria would have the capacity to produce 700 kilograms (1,543 pounds) of sarin -- enough to kill several million people.
The Foreign Ministry promised to investigate.
German Companies Suspected of Aiding Syrian Chemical Weapons Program - SPIEGEL ONLINE
Why hide the companies?
