CBC
In central Damascus, you could be forgiven for doubting that a war had ever occurred. The ancient old city in the Syrian capital hums with life, with street vendors hawking sweets and jewelry as crowds push by one another. The narrow passages and the splendour of sites like the Umayyad Mosque bear none of the scars of the country's devastating 14-year civil war.Barely a kilometre away lies another world. The Damascus suburb of Jobar, lying just across a busy highway from the Old City, is utterly demolished. A key front line for years, every single building there has been battered into oblivion by artillery and airstrikes. It is the first suburb leading into Eastern Ghouta, a belt of slums and orchards that formed a key stronghold for rebel forces contesting the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.Among these battered districts, one slum rises above the rest: the town of Douma. One of the informal capitals of the Syrian revolution, Douma was a priority target for the regime's retaliation, leaving scars that are visible on every single building in the town today.One of these attacks was far worse than the rest. On April 7, 2018, a Syrian Army helicopter dropped a barrel onto one of the buildings below. It did not explode upon landing, but released a far deadlier payload: chlorine gas. The gas flowed down from the barrel's landing place on the third floor into the building's basement, choking dozens of women and children who had been sheltering from the bombs.A man walks through the aftermath of the chemical weapons attack in the town of Douma, Syria, in April 2018. (Hassan Ammar/Associated Press)"This entire stairway was filled with bodies," said Abdurahman Hejazi, a local who witnessed the attack. "They were foaming at the mouth, drowning in their own lungs. Most of them didn't survive."The attack not only led to mass casualties. It would soon feature in a greater drama where some of its survivors were forced to falsely testify that it had never happened at all — an act that would earn some of them scorn and hatred from their neighbours, and eventually lead them to lose almost everything.'How could we possibly tell the truth?'The 2018 gas attack, which killed at least 40 people and injured hundreds more, came at the tail end of a brutal seven-year siege of Douma and the rest of Eastern Ghouta. The Syrian regime, alongside its Russian and Iranian allies, sought to finally expel rebels from the capital's environs and secure victory in the battle for Damascus. The chemical strike effectively broke rebel resistance in the area, leading to an evacuation deal that saw local insurgent groups transported to rebel-held territory in northern Syria, and the Assad regime reasserting control over Douma just days later.The site now is completely unremarkable, just another nondescript alley in a maze of derelict streets. A single poster on the wall memorializes four who died in the attack.The only indicator of the 2018 gas attack’s location in Douma is a single poster memorializing four of its victims. The two men on the right died fighting for a local rebel group. (Neil Hauer/CBC)For Hejazi and his friend Omar Diab, it led to a seven-year ordeal."We both went to the underground field hospital near here to help treat the victims of the gas attack," Diab said, speaking recently in a barely furnished apartment directly next to the site of the strike. "I was just trying to wash off the children — to clear the gas out of their eyes and face. There was a video of us that went viral. That's how they found us.""They," in this instance, is Russia and the Assad regime. After the attack, Moscow quickly went into damage control mode for its ally. It rounded up 17 Douma locals — Hejazi and Diab among them — and brought them to The Hague, Netherlands. There, they were made to testify to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) that the gas attack in Douma had been "staged" by rebel groups or the White Helmets, a civilian rescue organization."They took us first to Moscow, to make sure we understood what we were supposed to say there [in The Hague]," said Diab, whose then-11-year-old son Hassan was also brought to testify.This image, released by the Syrian Civil Defence White Helmets, shows a child receiving oxygen through a respirator following an alleged poison gas attack in the rebel-held town of Douma, near Damascus, Syria. (Syrian Civil Defence White Helmets/AP)Others on the trip confirmed this. Three Syrian medics from Douma told AFP the Assad government directly threatened their families in order to force them to deny the gas attack. Western countries decried the conference, with France's envoy to the OPCW describing it as an "obscene masquerade.""Our family members — the ones who had survived — were still in Douma," Diab said. "How could we possibly tell the truth, with them as hostages?"While that experience was harrowing enough, worse was to come.Rumours, threats emergeOnce Diab and Hejazi returned to Douma, they were given new apartments by the Assad regime — not as a reward, but to more effectively watch them and ensure their loyalty, according to the two men.This was interpreted by many other residents in the town, Diab and Hejazi say, as evidence they had lied about the deaths of their friends and neighbours in exchange for special privileges. Rumours also spread that the men had received special security permits that enabled them to bypass the many military checkpoints in town."We began to receive threats quickly after that," Hejazi said. "At first they were just angry comments and dirty looks, but soon it became clear that something more serious could happen. I began to feel like my life is in danger."WATCH | Syrians fear use of chemical weapons in Idlib (from 2018):The situation grew so tense that both men would try and flee the country in 2023. Hejazi went to the border with Lebanon, near the town of Talkalakh, a notorious smuggling hub. While he was waiting to be taken across, he was discovered by a Syrian army patrol and arrested, after which he was beaten severely for more than nine hours. He was brought back to Douma and told to never attempt to leave the town again, let alone Syria.Diab opted for the legal route, with similar consequences. He went to renew his passport, after which he was taken by Syrian military intelligence and jailed for 17 days. There would be no escape for him, either.Both men admit they had some hope when the Assad regime was toppled on Dec. 8 last year. That soon proved false."Three days after the regime fell, HTS (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) fighters came to my house," Diab said, referring to the rebel group that ousted Assad and runs the new Syrian government. "They threw me onto the street, telling me to never come back here. I wasn't even able to take any of my belongings — all I have now is literally the clothes on my back." He is now living with his parents, on the very same street where the gas attack took place. Accusations of taking bribesThe same happened to Hejazi. His home was seized by a local sheikh who moved to Saudi Arabia years ago and has amassed sizable influence in his native Douma since then."I can't go to the new authorities about this, because [the sheikh] has a lot of locals here that love him," Hejazi said. "If I push the issue, I might get kidnapped or even killed. They are friends with the fighters from the north [Idlib, HTS's longtime headquarters], and they have all the power."Hejazi had been planning his wedding at the time of the regime's fall and his eviction. Now, with no home or possessions, that has been postponed indefinitely.This nondescript street in Douma was the site of one of the worst war crimes of Syria’s 14-year civil war: the April 2018 gas attack. (Neil Hauer/CBC)A short tour around the neighbourhood confirms what the two men say about the widespread dislike for them."I know some of the people who went [to The Hague] were threatened by the regime," said Ziad al-Zaher, a 47-year-old mechanic. "But others definitely took bribes. The regime gave them privileges in exchange for lying."Even some of the other witnesses brought by Russia to the OPCW conference feel this way. Tawfiq Ali Diab, who lost his wife and three daughters in the attack, has an intense dislike for Hejazi and Omar Diab.Caolan Robertson, a Kyiv-based journalist who met the men in December for his own story, said, "When we met [Tawfiq], he was screaming in the street, saying that he didn't want to talk to us because we had come from talking to Abdurahman [Hejazi].""He said that [Hejazi and Omar Diab] had taken regime bribes, that they had lied for their own gain," Robertson said.'Why does no one help us?'Hejazi and Omar Diab categorically deny taking any bribes. "We had no choice in anything," Diab said. "The regime put us in these apartments and we could not do anything about it."Used by the Assad regime and despised by their neighbours, Hejazi and Diab face an impossible situation. Neither feels safe living in Douma, but neither has any hope of escape or redress from the new authorities, either."Our only hope is the international community, talking to the media," said Hejazi, taking a long and nervous drag on a cigarette. "These countries like France and Switzerland, that send delegations here, they say human rights are important to them. Why does no one help us? Are they waiting for one of us to be killed?"
