Two doctors and a nurse say they were “pressured” by Bashar al-Assad’s regime to alter their testimony and deny any use of chemical weapons before international investigators following a deadly 2018 chlorine attack in Douma, near in Damascus.

On 7 April 2018, as Douma, the last rebel stronghold in eastern Ghouta, was under heavy shelling, a building near a field hospital was hit.

In an exclusive interview with Agence France-Presse, three health workers who had taken care of the victims of the attack say that they were interrogated by the security services.

“They told me they knew where to find my family,” orthopedic surgeon Mohammad Al Hanas told AFP.

“A gun was placed on the table, pointed at me,” said intensivist Hassan Uyoun.

Muaffak Nisrin, who was an ambulance driver and nurse at the time, was also questioned after he was caught on video patting the back of a naked little girl who was being doused with water as she spat out phlegm after inhaling toxic gas.

“They told us there was no chemical attack, that they wanted to put an end to these allegations so that Douma could turn the page,” he recalled.

“I was under pressure as my family resides in Douma, like most families of medical staff,” he says.

In a report, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in January 2023 accused Damascus of carrying out the chlorine attack that killed 43 people.

According to its investigators, “there are good reasons to believe” that at least one Syrian air force helicopter dropped two barrels of toxic gas on the city of Douma.