OPCW Fact-Finding Mission in Syria is doing a poor job

Russia’s Permanent Representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Alexander Schulgen said that the staff of the OPCW Fact Finding Mission (FFM) in Syria is doing a poor job.

Schulgen said in a statement on Friday that the FFM is working in a poor way as they don’t go to the scenes of incidents and they are content with remote investigations as the Mission draws its conclusions based on materials from social networks and data provided by NGOs and armed groups.

He added that the FFM staff grossly violates the chain of procedures of ensuring the preservation of physical evidence and at the same time they don’t consider the evidence provided by the Syrian government and the Russian army.

Schulgen indicated that regrettably, the FFM deals with “holiness” with information provided by disreputable organizations such as the “White Helmets”.

“We have repeatedly suggested the issue of improving the work of the FFM on the basis of meeting the requirements of the Chemical Weapons agreement, and we also demand correcting the situation with regard to the FFM staff which is controlled by a number of states that call themselves the friends of Syria,” Schulgen said.

He indicated that the serious doubts about the integrity of the FFM are based on the fact that the two chairmen of it have been until recently British.