Watchdog

The global chemical-weapons watchdog has for the first time directly blamed the Syrian government for three chlorine and sarin nerve-gas bomb attacks in late March 2017 on the central town of Lataminah.

An investigative team set up by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on April 8 issued its first report assigning blame for chemical attacks in the country. Previously, it had only been able to say whether chemical attacks had occurred but without naming the perpetrators.

"There are reasonable grounds to believe that the perpetrators of the use of sarin as a chemical weapon in Lataminah in 2017...and the use of chlorine...were individuals belonging to the Syrian Arab Air Force," the OPCW’s new Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) said.

Western states have long accused the Syrian government of using chemical weapons against rebel groups and civilians in the country's nine-year civil war.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government and its main allies, Russia and Iran, have dismissed the accusations, claiming that rebels were staging the attacks to trigger international outrage and Western military intervention. Russia and Syria have repeatedly tried to block investigations into a series of chemical weapons attacks in the country.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry said the OPCW’s latest report “is misleading and contains falsified and fabricated conclusions,” while Russia's permanent mission to the watchdog described the document as "not trustworthy."

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that "no amount of disinformation from Assad's enablers in Russia and Iran can hide the fact that the Assad regime is responsible for numerous chemical-weapons attacks."

"The unchecked use of chemical weapons by any state presents an unacceptable security threat to all states and cannot occur with impunity," Pompeo said.

He added that Washington believed that the Syrian government retains enough sarin and chlorine as well as expertise to use and produce chemical weapons.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, whose country holds a rotating seat on the 15-member UN Security Council, said, "Such a blatant violation of international law must not go unpunished."

It is now up to the United Nations and OPCW members to determine what, if any further action, should be taken against the Syrian government.

The OPCW report said Syrian Arab Air Force pilots flying Sukhoi Su-22 military planes dropped two bombs containing sarin on Lataminah in Hama Province on March 24 and 30, 2017. A Syrian military helicopter dropped a chlorine cylinder on a hospital in the same village on March 25 that year, the report said. More than 100 people were affected by the attacks.

"Military operations of such a strategic nature as these three attacks only occur pursuant to orders from the highest levels of the Syrian Arab Armed Forces," the ITT report said.

Another deadly sarin assault in nearby Khan Sheikhun on April 4, 2017, killed more than 80 people.

The United States led Western countries in launching air strikes on Syrian military targets in response to the Khan Sheikhun attack.

The OPCW team is expected to later release another report into a 2018 chlorine attack in the Syrian town of Douma.

Damascus was supposed to relinquish its chemical-weapons stockpiles under a 2013 agreement reached between the United States and Russia following a suspected sarin-gas attack that killed 1,400 people in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta.

With reporting by AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters, and TASS

A United Nations review of Uzbekistan's human rights record expresses concerns about persistent torture in detention centers and limits on basic freedoms, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The UN Human Rights Committee's conclusions reflect the fact that many pledged rights reforms have yet to materialize, HRW said in a news release on April 8.

"The UN committee review shows that Uzbekistan remains largely authoritarian with a very poor human rights record," said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at HRW in Berlin.

The committee's conclusions show that the government has much to do to address human rights, Williamson said.

The UN Human Rights Committee last week published its observations on Uzbekistan's compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It was its first review of Uzbekistan's human rights record since President Shavkat Mirziyoev came to power in 2016.

The committee expressed concerns about the "torture and ill-treatment of people deprived of liberty, as well as restrictions on the freedom of conscience and religious belief, freedom of expression, freedom of association and peaceful assembly."

The committee noted, however, that there had been progress in fighting corruption, preventing violence against women, judiciary reform, and the elimination of child and forced labor in the cotton sector.

Mirziyoev has taken steps to implement reforms since coming to power. Still, rights watchdogs have expressed concerns about conditions in Uzbekistan, where rights abuses had been widespread under his predecessor, Islam Karimov.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, during a visit to Tashkent in February, said the country "deserves praise for its progress on human rights issues" and commended it for reforms aimed at a more free society with a more accountable government.