January 6, 2004

Are Saddam's WMD in Syria?

A Dutch newspaper says some of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were moved to Syria - and the Bush administration has a pretty good idea where they are. If you can read Dutch, you can read the full account here. Charles Paul Freund has a summary at the Reason blog.

According to a story Monday in the Dutch newspaper, De Telegraaf, a Syrian journalist identified as "Nizar Najoef" has identified three locations in Syria where Iraqi WMD is hidden. "Nizar Najoef" is more commonly spelled Nizar Nayyouf, and he is a remarkable man. He was a journalist and an activist for liberal reform under Hafez Assad, and as a result spent nine years in prison. ... Nayyouf now lives in Europe. ... Where does Nayyouf say the WMD is (or was) hidden? In tunnels beneath the town of al-Baida; near the village of Tal Snan; and in "Sjinsjar" (Dutch spelling), a city east of the highway between Hama and Damascus. Nayyouf says he received the information through connections in Syrian intelligence. He believes the U.S. knows all of this, but is biding its time for political reasons. It will act on the information, he told the newspaper, "when the U.S. thinks it's time to see Assad go."

Nizar Nayyouf, an exiled Syrian journalist, said in a letter published Monday by the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, that he knows the three sites where Iraq’s WMD are kept. According to him, the storage places are tunnels dug under the town of al-Baida near the city of Hama in northern Syria. These tunnels are an integral part of an underground factory, built by the North Koreans, for producing Syrian Scud missiles. Iraqi chemical weapons and long-range missiles are stored in these tunnels, Nayyouf claimed in his letter.

Another site is the village of Tel Snan, north of the town of Salamiyah, where there is a big Syrian airforce camp. The third site, according to this journalist, is the city of Shenshar on the Syrian border with the Lebanon, south of the city Homs. Nayyouf wrote that the transfer of Iraqi WMD to Syria was organized by the commanders of Saddam Hussein’s Special Republican Guard.

Nayyouf was a founding member of a human rights organization, the Committee for the Defense of Democratic Freedom and Human Rights (CDF), which had been banned by the Syrian government shortly after its establishment. He was arrested and jailed in 1992 and was released during May 2001.

RPS believes that political despotism, economic deprivation, and social stagnation in the Middle East have contributed significantly to the increase in domestic and international terrorism, to the tainting of the United States image in the Arab and Muslim worlds, and to an Arab public policy that dilutes the goodwill the US harbors for democratic values in the Middle East. RPS embraces accountability and transparency, human rights and freedom of expression, pulling out of Lebanon, and peaceful co-existence with our neighbors.