US sanctions over 270 Syrians after chemical attack

The US on Monday blacklisted 271 employees of a Syrian government agency it said was responsible for developing chemical weapons, weeks after a poison gas attack reportedly killed scores of people in a rebel-held province in Syria.

The US treasury department sanctioned 271 employees of Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC), an agency that Washington says develops chemical weapons for the government of Bashar al-Assad, the treasury said in a statement.

Some of the people blacklisted had worked on Syria’s chemical weapons programme for more than five years, the statement said.

The sanction orders US banks to freeze any assets of the named employees, and bans American companies from conducting business with them.

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Those designated were “highly-educated“ individuals who were likely to be able to travel outside of Syria and use the international financial system, even if they may not have assets abroad, US administration officials said during a conference call with reporters.

"These sweeping sanctions target the scientific support centre for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad's horrific chemical weapons attack on innocent civilian men, women, and children," US treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.

US authorities, he said, would “relentlessly pursue and shut down the financial networks of all individuals involved with the production of chemical weapons used to commit these atrocities”.

The sanctions listings are the latest action by the Trump administration in response to the April 4th chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun, which US authorities say killed nearly 90 people, including children.

The US says Assad’s forces carried out the attack, while Assad has said the attack is a fabrication.

Missile strike

Earlier this month, the US launched dozens of missiles against a Syrian air base the Pentagon says was used to launch the chemical attack.

Then US president George W Bush first placed sanctions against the SSRC in 2005, accusing it of producing weapons of mass destruction.

Although the Syrian government promotes the SSRC as a civilian research centre, US officials said that “its activities focus substantively on the development of biological and chemical weapons”.

During the Obama administration, the US sanctioned people and companies for supporting the SSRC in July 2016.

On January 12th last, the US treasury sanctioned six SSRC officials it said were linked to branches of the agency affiliated with chemical weapons logistics or research.

Reuters