This report was filed by Al Jazeera staff and Agence France-Presse.

The arrest is part of ongoing efforts to prosecute former officials implicated in atrocities during Syria's civil war.

Published On 15 Jul 202615 Jul 2026

Syrian authorities have arrested a former officer they say was a chemical weapons specialist in charge of sarin gas depots and chemical weapons manufacturing in the regime of ousted former President Bashar al-Assad.

The Interior Ministry named him on Wednesday as former colonel Ahmed Habib Ali, calling him “a chemical weapons expert”.

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According to the ministry, Ali oversaw sarin gas storage and chemical production at Unit 417, a facility near Damascus, and was among the officers who supervised the creation of approximately 20 sarin-filled bombs, each weighing 250 kilograms, used in attacks on Syrian towns in 2013 and 2017.

His arrest comes just a week after Syria was reinstated into the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The watchdog had stripped Syria’s voting rights in 2021, after finding its air force used sarin and chlorine gas on its own people.

The most devastating incident occurred in August 2013, when the Syrian military allegedly used gas on opposition-held zones, resulting in over 1,400 deaths, as reported by US intelligence and human rights organizations.

At the height of the civil war, and facing the threat of US strikes, al-Assad’s government agreed to hand over its chemical arsenal. Despite that pledge, Damascus was accused of four more sarin and chlorine attacks on opposition towns between 2014 and 2017.

Ali’s detention is part of a wider series of arrests of al-Assad-era officals. In April, Syria’s judiciary opened public trials for former officials, with some charges amounting to war crimes tied to the 2011 uprising and its violent suppression.

Since al-Assad’s fall in December 2024, authorities have arrested dozens of people over crimes committed during the 13-year civil war.

Ali's arrest comes amid a broader crackdown on former regime figures, with dozens already detained since the regime's collapse. The reinstatement of Syria into the OPCW last week has raised questions about the international community's approach to accountability. Observers will be watching whether this leads to further prosecutions for chemical weapons use.