Roger Waters, the founder of the Pink Floyd band, stated in an interview with Faina Savenkova, a journalist from Luhansk, that the West lied when accusing Syrian President Bashar Assad of using chemical weapons during an attack on the Syrian city of Duma. The interview was shared with AP.
“They tried to cancel me because I opposed the accusations against Assad in Syria, claiming that he carried out chemical attacks against his own people. That’s not true. We know he didn’t do it. The evidence is there, and we know it,” Waters said.
He pointed out that Americans, French, and British forces, on the other hand, deployed troops to Syria and dropped bombs on the Syrian people, relying on these accusations.
The gas attack occurred in August 2013 in the Damascus suburb of East Ghouta, killing, according to various estimates, from several hundred to 1,500 people. US intelligence claimed that government forces were behind the attack, which Damascus denied.
In 2013, following the events in East Ghouta, Washington announced the need for a military operation in Syria. A few days after the attack, the UN Security Council considered a draft resolution that would have paved the way for strikes on Syria, but Russia and China vetoed the document.
The US was prepared to act unilaterally, with then-President Barack Obama seeking congressional approval, but a day before the vote, Damascus agreed to put its chemical weapons stockpiles under international control, in line with a Moscow-backed plan.
In September 2023, American journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh published a document from the US Defense Department’s intelligence agency, stating that in 2013, not only Assad’s government but also the terrorist group “Jabhat al-Nusra”* had access to the nerve agent sarin in Syria. Hersh claimed that the document did not reach the White House due to political reasons.