The UN chemical weapons watchdog has been ordered to pay moral and legal compensation to one of its former investigators who was censured and smeared by the organization for challenging its fabricated claim that the Syrian government carried out a chemical attack against its own civilians in Douma in April 2018.

On 1 May, former Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) investigator Brendan Whelan announced that an independent arbitration body, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), had ruled in his favor and ordered the OPCW to pay damages and legal costs.

Beyond vindicating Whelan, the arbitration case highlights the OPCW leadership’s effort to manipulate its own report to maintain the false narrative that the former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was behind a series of chemical attacks during the 14-year US and Israeli-backed dirty war that sought to topple his government and install an Al-Qaeda-linked militant leader in his place.