Syrian authorities arrest ex-officer accused of chemical weapons crimes

Syrian authorities have arrested former Colonel Ahmed Habib Ali, who was in charge of sarin gas depots and chemical weapons manufacturing within Unit 417 near Damascus. He is accused of supervising the production of about 20 sarin gas bombs weighing 250 kg each, used in attacks in 2013 and 2017. The arrest comes a week after Syria was reinstated into the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which had stripped Syria's voting rights in 2021. Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, authorities have made dozens of arrests of former officials for war crimes.