A defector’s account of Syrian chemical weapons on the move

Reports from inside two Syrian chemical weapons facilities offer chilling new evidence that President Bashar al-Assad’s regime developed special vehicles last year for moving and mixing the weapons — and an unconfirmed allegation that Lebanese allies of the regime, presumably in Hezbollah, may have been trained 11 months ago in the weapons’ use.

…According to the defector’s account, two senior Syrian officers moved about 100 kilograms of chemical weapons materials from a secret military base in January. The base was in a village called Nasiriyah, about 50 to 60 kilometers northeast of Damascus.

The officers placed the chemicals in a civilian vehicle and were seen driving across a bridge in the direction of the highway toward Lebanon, the Syrian source said. Two days later, he continued, two men with Lebanese accents arrived at the Nasiriyah base and were given training in how to combine and activate the chemicals, as well as the proper safety precautions in handling them.

Rumors about possible movement of Syrian chemical weapons have been spreading recently in the Middle East. But U.S. officials don’t appear to have any evidence that chemical weapons have actually been moved anywhere outside Syria.

The Syrian source also described construction of special trucks, which could transport and mix the weapons, at a workshop in the Damascus suburb of Dummar. This workshop was part of a network of secret research facilities known in Arabic as the “Bohous,” the source said. Construction of these mobile laboratories began in the summer of 2011, a few months after revolutionaries began threatening Assad’s regime.

In the Dummar workshop, the Syrian source said, technicians constructed a mobile lab that could combine and activate so-called “binary” chemical weapons agents. These mobile mixers were constructed inside Mercedes or Volvo trucks that appeared, from the outside, to be similar to refrigerator trucks. Inside were storage tanks, pipes and a motor to drive the mixing machinery, the defector said.

The defector estimated that 10 to 15 of these mobile laboratories had been constructed. An independent source said these numbers were high, but he confirmed that the Syrians do have mobile labs.