BBC Producer Admits Douma “Chemical Attack” Was “Staged;” Confirms Independent Media Reporting

Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post
February 20, 2019

It’s almost a year after the bombing of al-Sha’aryat Airbase in Syria by the United States. Almost a year since the alleged “chemical weapons attack” on Douma, Syria which was blamed on the Syrian government and justified the subsequent American bombing. Now, after the resultant deaths of innocent people via America's Tomahawk missile attack and the ridicule and blacklisting of alt media outlets who questioned and disproved the claims of the U.S. government regarding Douma, a BBC producer has admitted that the attack was staged.

Riam Dalati is a well-known BBC Syria producer who has been reporting from the region for a long time. Now, he has stated that, after a six month investigation, he has concluded that the scene in the Douma Hospital was staged. Dalati made his statements on his twitter account which has over 20,000 followers including many mainstream journalists.

“I can prove without a doubt that the Douma Hospital scene was staged,” he wrote.

The “Douma Hospital scene” to which Dalati is referring is the footage showing children in a Douma hospital being hosed off and treated by doctors and White Helmets. The civilians were allegedly victims of a chemical attack. That narrative was subsequently taken apart by journalists like Pearson Sharp and Eva Bartlett who traveled to the scene of the alleged attack and interviewed alleged “victims” who contradicted the stories coming out of Western mainstream media. Western governments and corporate media, however, still clung to the “Assad gassed his own people” narrative.

Dalati stated that “After 6 months of investigations, I can prove without a doubt that the Douma Hospital scene was staged. No fatalities occurred in the hospital.” He added that he had interviewed a number of White Helmets personnel and “opposition activists” during the course of his investigation.

He followed up by stating that “Russia and at least one NATO country knew about what happened in the hospital. Documents were sent. However, no one knew what really happened at the flats apart from activists manipulating the scene there. This is why Russia focused solely on discrediting the hospital scene.”


The “flats” are a reference to the footage from a bombed out apartment which also showed dozens of dead civilians, a second scene manipulated and exploited by the terrorists and their supporters. The footage showed allegedly “gassed” corpses of both women and young children lying about the apartment building. The images were used by mainstream media to maximum effect, being recycled endlessly in order to drum up support for the Trump administration's missile strike on Syria.

Dalati continued by saying “Truth is James Harkin got the basics right in terms of Douma’s “propaganda” value. The ATTACK DID HAPPEN, Sarin wasn’t used, but we’ll have to wait for OPCW to prove Chlorine or otherwise. However, everything else around the attack was manufactured for maximum effect.”

James Harkin, the man to whom Dalati is referring, recently published an article in The Intercept which, according to Zero Hedge, “examined the scenes and physical environs of the alleged Douma attack and interviewed eyewitnesses on site. His report paints a complex picture of propaganda and deeply compromised rebel sources such as Saudi-backed Jaish al Islam, which had control of Douma amidst a Syrian government onslaught to retake the town.”

Continuing further, Dalati stated:

I can tell you that Jaysh al-Islam ruled Douma with an iron fist. They coopted activists, doctors and humanitarians with fear and intimidation. In fac, one of the 3 or 4 people filming the scene was Dr. Abu Bakr Hanan, a “brute and shifty” doctor affiliated with Jaysh al-Islam. The narrative was that “there weren’t enough drs” but here is one filming and not taking part of the rescue efforts. Will keep the rest for later. 

Just a few hours after making his statements, Dalati switched his twitter account (verified to be his) to “private.” This is most likely due to either internal pressure or the fact that the Russian embassy quickly seized on the statements and began promoting them in Russian media outlets.

TASS news agency quoted Ministry Spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, as responding to the statements by saying:

“The culmination of this theater of absurd may be a statement by a BBC producer who confirmed based on his own research that the footage [in Syria’s Douma] had been staged with direct participation of the White Helmets,” Zakharova said, noting that Russia wants to listen to the company’s position because it actively covered the events from the perspective of supporting the steps of the so-called US-led coalition in Syria.

Russia is now demanding that the BBC make public the results of its investigation.

Zero Hedge also adds:

Harkin made mention of plausible early reports that the Douma victims had actually died of asphyxiation while hiding in an enclosed space or bunker due to repeat waves of conventional ordinance fired by the Syrian Army:

When it came to Douma, the Russians weren’t the only ones who were skeptical, at least initially, that chemical weapons had been used. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based outfit that leans toward the opposition but whose reporting network inside the country is usually seen as most authoritative by the international media, noted the day after the attack that people had died in Douma through suffocation, but couldn’t say whether chemical weapons had been used.

The Intercept report also highlighted the fact that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons investigation flatly contradicted Washington’s claims that sarin had been used. Instead, “samples collected at both locations turned up ‘various chlorinated organic chemicals’ along with ‘the residues of explosive’ — not quite the same thing as saying that chlorine had been used as a chemical weapon…” according to the report.

Harkin further underscored that the OPCW’s on-site findings came as “something of a surprise” to analysts who had long parroted the early US and mainstream media claims of a confirmed chemical attack:

At least some of that caution appears to have been warranted. Three months after the attack, the OPCW released its interim report into what happened in Douma. The report found no evidence of organophosphorus nerve agents like sarin either at the site or in samples from the casualties — something of a surprise, because the suspected use of sarin had been one of the justifications for American airstrikes back in April, and alleged Syrian chemical weapons facilities their primary target. But the investigators did find something else.

This isn’t the first statement questioning the official narrative in Douma by Dalati. In a now deleted tweet made on April 11, 2018, Dalati stated that he was “Sick and tired of activists and rebels using corpses of dead children to stage emotive scenes for Western consumption. Then they wonder why some serious journos are questioning part of the narrative.”

As Whitney Webb and Vanessa Beeley write in their article, “As Mainstream Journalists Acknowledge Douma Attacks Were “Staged,” the “Humanitarian” Syria Regime-Change Network Tries to Save A Sinking Ship,”

Dalati was referring to the image of two children wrapped in a “last hug” that went viral on social media, eliciting sympathy for the “chemical attack” narrative.

Dalati pointed out that the two children had been photographed on separate floors in the building before being artfully arranged into the “last hug” position by the producers of this scene, which was picked up by the majority of corporate media and used to give the impression that the Syrian Arab Army had used chemical weapons against their own civilians as they were concluding final amnesty negotiations with Jaish Al Islam, the extremist group then occupying Douma.

Shortly after deleting the aforementioned tweet, Dalati protected his Twitter account before reiterating his observations in a less inflammatory tweet, while explaining that his first tweet had been “correctly deemed in breach of [BBC] editorial policy thru [sic] use of ‘sick/tired’ and by not providing context…”

Dalati had notably been a member of the production team of the notorious September 2013 BBC Panorama documentary “Saving Syria’s Children” — a report that was forensically investigated by independent researcher Robert Stuart, who concluded that “sequences filmed by BBC personnel and others at Atareb Hospital, Aleppo on 26 August 2013 purporting to show the aftermath of an incendiary bomb attack on a nearby school are largely, if not entirely, staged.”

. . . . .

So, Dalati, no stranger to controversy, appears to have once more broken with the ranks of mainstream media by admitting that the White Helmet “chemical attack” scenes in Douma Medical Point were “without a doubt” staged. One might ask why it took Dalati six months of investigation to arrive at the same conclusion as acclaimed journalist Robert Fisk and other on-the-ground journalists did just days after the attack occurred. At the time, those journalists had been labeled by Dalati and others as “conspiracy theorists.”

Beeley and Webb are also cautious about Dalati’s revelations, openly wondering whether or not Dalati is sincere or if his statements are merely an attempt at a limited hangout and a cover-up of larger revelations that would expose the entire event as the orchestrated stage show that it was. They write,

Dalati may genuinely be a rogue maverick, sickened by what he has seen. He may also be working at the behest of the BBC directors — to limit the damage to the BBC’s reputation were the OPCW to release its final report any time soon. Imagine that the OPCW final report errs toward a conclusion that no chemical attack took place in Douma: where would that leave the BBC and colonial media establishment? The trust gap would widen exponentially. Time will tell, but one thing is for sure, Schneider’s report is indicative of the distress signals being emitted by the “humanitarian” regime-change network floundering on the rocks of its own failed campaign to destabilize Syria and overthrow the majority-elected Syrian government.

Whatever the case, the facts remain that the Douma incident was nothing more than an exercise in expert level propaganda operation on behalf of the terrorists, Western governments, and the media mouthpieces that speak in unison against Syria and Western civilization.

I highly recommend reading my articles on the Douma chemical attack as well as the work of Vanessa Beeley of 21st Century Wire and The Wall Will Fall, and Pearson Sharp of OAN in order to understand how the attack has been so thoroughly debunked even before the missiles and bombs began to fall on Syria in "response" to the "alleged" incident.

US Bombs Syria To Cover Up Lack Of Evidence On Chem Attacks, Discredits Own Claims By Doing So - Brandon Turbeville

The Truth About The Syria Chemical Attacks – No Evidence of Assad Chem Weapons, Western False Flag Seems Likely - Brandon Turbeville

Syria - Manipulated Videos Fail To Launch World War III - Updated - Moon of Alabama

Photo and Video Diary from Eastern Ghouta, Syria - Vanessa Beeley

DOUMA: Testimonies from Kidnap Victims - Vanessa Beeley

Follow Vanessa Beeley on Twitter here

OAN'S PEARSON SHARP REFUTES MSM REPORTS OF ALLEGED SYRIAN CHEMICAL ATTACK - Pearson Sharp

OAN Investigation Finds No Evidence of Chemical Weapon Attack in Syria - Pearson Sharp

Pearson Sharp Visits Hospital in Douma when white helmets filmed ‘chemical attack hoax’ - Pearson Sharp

Eva Bartlett blows the lid on staged chemical weapons attack in Syria (VIDEO) - Eva Bartlett

SYRIAN CIVILIANS FROM GROUND ZERO EXPOSE CHEMICAL HOAX - Eva Bartlett


Brandon Turbeville writes for Activist Post – article archive here – He is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President, and Resisting The Empire: The Plan To Destroy Syria And How The Future Of The World Depends On The Outcome. Turbeville has published over 1500 articles on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, civil liberties and, most notably, geopolitics and the Syrian crisis. His most recent release is a book of poetry, Dance, Amputee. Brandon Turbeville’s radio show Truth on The Tracks can be found atUCYTV. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com. He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

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