Meet Fares Shehabi, Syrian MP who spreads disinformation and does not respond to questions about the Douma attack

At February 14 Riam Dalati, a BBC Syria producer, sent a couple of Tweets about the alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria. Dalati used his personal Twitter account for this. He stated  the hospital scene was staged. “No fatalities occured in the hospital”. And he also stated ” the attack did happen, Sarin wasn’t used”.

Dalati did not present any evidence for his statements. The next day his Twitter account was blocked by him so people not following him cannot read his Tweets.

Immediately after the Tweets Assad apologists, trolls and others started to Tweet about the Tweets by Dalati. In most of the cases the content of the Tweets were changed to lines like ‘“BBC producers says he can prove without doubt #Douma chemical attack in #Syria was fake/staged”

Notice the difference! From a unproven statement about an alleged staged hospital scene trolls change it to ’the chemical attack was staged’. Also the personal Tweet of a BBC employee was changed by trolls on social media pretending the BBC confirmed video’s were staged.

All the Assad apologists on Twitter forget to mention the shocking videos made inside the apartment building showing many dead persons including children.

A Syrian member of Parliament named Fares Shehabi also participated in spreading disinformation about the Tweets by Dalati. On February 15 he sent the Tweet shown below:

When we said the #Douma alleged chemical attack was staged they did not believe us and they accused us of being “Assadists”! Well, here is BBC’s own @Dalatrm affirming now the truth!

Mind the mentioning of the “staged chemical attack” and “affirming the truth” suggesting Shebabi wants the reader to believe Dalati confirms the whole attack was staged.

Shebabi can be seen in several Russian RT interviews. He was also seen on British television in November 2016. On Channel 4 news he did not deny the Syrian airforce bombs hospitals. His response to a question by Jon Snow (around 03:11) why Syria bombs hospitals was “if they really care about hospitals why would they turn state owned hospitals into command centres for al-Qaeda?”

Which is complete nonsense as there is no proof at all the many hospitals bombed by Syria and Russian air force were in use as command centres.

Back to the Tweets of Shehabi.

Shehabi included four of the five Tweets sent by Dalati but he did not include the Tweet by Dalati in which he stated “the attack did happen“!. All five Tweets can be seen at archive.org. Archive.org was able to capture the Tweets before the account  was blocked.

So I asked this member of Parliament “Can you explain why you do not mention the Tweet of Dalati saying” THE ATTACK DID HAPPEN?”

The response by Shehabi was:

Ask her! It was not the Syrian army that carried this alleged attack! Better yet, why don’t you review the testimony of the hospital staff where this show took place?!

Ask her? Who is the ‘her’ referring to ? Riam Dalati is obviously a man. Could it be Mr Shebabi was not so well informed about what he actually wrote on Twitter?

Actually all indications are pointing to involvement of the Syrian military in the Douma chemical attack. The Intercept published recently a very good article written by James Harkin. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova  refered to this article in here weekly pressbriefing on February 14 . Ted Postol is mentioned in the article saying that he was immediately certain that both (canisters) had been launched from the sky by the Syrian military. Postol is not known to someone who is critical towards the Syrian regime. He had been in various discussions with Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat.

So back to MP Shebabi  again. He clearly is not willing to answers my question. So I tried again to give Mr Shehabi a chance to make himself clear. I sent this Tweet.

Please answer my question. Why did you not include the statement of Mr. Dalati saying ‘a attack did happen’ ?

Again no answer to a simple question. Instead his response was:

Why do you ignore the findings of the OPCW?!

We did not discuss OPCW so this is another distraction by the Syrian MP . Assad apologists like to pretend as if Sarin was the reason for the attack by the US, UK and France. OPCW in its preliminary report concluded it found “various chlorinated organic chemicals ” in samples. The blogpost makes clear Sarin was not the reason for the attack by the US and others. The fact that Assad uses repeatedly chemical weapons against its own citiziens was the reason for the attack.