Eastern Ghouta, Syria – On the night of August 21, 2013, Amina Habya was still awake when she heard screaming outside the window of Zamalka, Guta.

Bashar al-Assad’s regime had just fired rockets filled with sarin gas into Zamarka, and people were shouting: “Chemical weapons attack! Chemical weapons attack!”

She quickly dipped a towel in the water and put it over her nose before running to the fifth and highest floor of the building with her daughter and son-in-law.

Since chemicals are typically heavier than air, Habia realized there might be less pollution in the upper floors of buildings.

They were safe, but Habia later discovered that her husband and son, who were not at home, had suffocated, as well as their sleeping daughter-in-law and two children.

“Death is everywhere,” said Habia, 60, sitting on a plastic chair outside her home, wearing a black robe, black headscarf and a black scarf around her face.

Habia still lives in a modest one-story apartment in Zamarka with her married daughter, remaining grandson and son-in-law. Their building is one of the few intact structures in the neighborhood.

Others were razed to the ground by regime airstrikes during the war.

She held up a photo during an interview with Al Jazeera of eight children wrapped in black blankets whose bodies were recovered from a sarin gas attack and suffocated to death.

Two of them are her grandchildren.

“This is my granddaughter, this is my grandson,” she told Al Jazeera, pointing to the two dead children in the photo.

According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, the attack killed about 1,127 people and caused 6,000 others to suffer from acute respiratory symptoms.

“(Rescuers) found five people dead in the bathroom. Some (bodies) were found on the stairs, some on the floor. Others (died) while they were sleeping,” Habia said.

The legacy of chemical warfare

Assad fled to Russia with his family on December 8, before opposition fighters arrived in the capital.

For 13 years, he and his family waged a devastating war against their people rather than surrender power to the popular uprising against him that began in March 2011.

The Assad regime has systematically launched airstrikes against civilians, starved communities, and tortured and killed tens of thousands of real and perceived dissidents.

But the regime’s use of chemical weapons What is prohibited by international law and convention is perhaps one of the darkest aspects of the conflict.

A 2019 report by the Institute for Global Policy showed that of the 336 chemical weapons attacks during the war, 98% were carried out by the Syrian regime, while the rest were attributed to the “Islamic State” (ISIS).

The confirmed attacks took place over a six-year period from 2012 to 2018, often targeting rebel-controlled areas as part of a wider policy of collective punishment, the report said.

Dozens of attacks were carried out on towns and areas on the outskirts of Damascus, as well as on villages in the provinces of Homs, Idlib and Rif Dimashq.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights estimates that some 1,514 people died of suffocation in these attacks, including 214 children and 262 women.

In Eastern Ghouta, victims told Al Jazeera they still couldn’t shake the painful memories, even as they were filled with joy and relief that Assad was finally removed from power.

joy and despair

Habia said she neither hated nor loved Assad before the war, but became frightened when the regime began a brutal crackdown on protesters and civilians who were not involved.

In early 2013, regime officials kidnapped and imprisoned her son as he prayed in the store. Months later, they killed her son’s family in a chemical weapons attack.

Habia never saw her son again and only learned in 2016 that he had died in the notorious Sednaya prison.

Habia believes the regime is particularly repressive and persecuting civilians in Ghouta because it is on Damascus’s doorstep and has been overrun by rebels.

“We became very scared,” Habia told Al Jazeera. “The mere name ‘Bashar al-Assad’ strikes fear into us all.”

As Assad’s regime committed increasing atrocities, then-President Barack Obama told reporters in 2012 that the use of chemical weapons in Syria was a “red line” that if crossed, he would be forced to Use of force in Syria. Syria.

After the sarin gas attack in August 2013, Obama forced to make good on his warningwhich could anger his base, who believe the United States should not interfere in foreign conflicts.

A Pew Research Center poll conducted from August 29 to September 1 of that year showed that only 29% of Obama’s Democratic base believed that the United States should attack Syria, while 48% firmly opposed it. The rest are unsure.

Eventually, Obama called off the attack and accepted an offer from Russian President Vladimir Putin to allow the United Nations agency the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile.

Although the OPCW did destroy many of the chemical weapons claimed by the Syrian government at the end of its first mission on September 30, 2014, the UN agency said the government may have concealed some of its stockpiles.

After the Syrian regime repeatedly used chemical weapons in the war, the OPCW decided to suspend Syria’s eligibility to join the Chemical Weapons Convention in April 2021, citing Syria’s failure to fulfill its obligations.

longing for justice

Syrians have been angered by the regime’s lack of adequate punishment, and many victims of the 2013 attacks still yearn for justice.

Poking her head from the door, Habia’s 33-year-old daughter Eman Suleiman told Al Jazeera she wanted the international community to help hold Assad accountable for his atrocities and recommended that the International Criminal Court (ICC) sue him.

However, Syria is not currently a member of the Rome Statute, which gives the court jurisdiction. The only way for the ICC to open a case in Syria is for the new authorities to sign and approve the statute, or for the UN Security Council to pass a resolution allowing the ICC to investigate atrocities in Syria.

Assad and his closest aides could theoretically be charged with a range of serious abuses, including the use of chemical weapons, that could amount to crimes against humanity, according to Human Rights Watch.

In November 2023, a French judge approved an arrest warrant for Assad, accusing him of ordering the use of chemical weapons in Eastern Ghouta.

The warrant was granted under the legal concept of “universal jurisdiction,” which allows any country to try alleged war criminals who have committed serious crimes anywhere in the world.

“We want to see (Assad) put on trial, sentenced and held accountable,” Suleiman told Al Jazeera.

“We just want our rights. No more, no less. In any country in the world, if someone kills another human being, they will be held accountable,” she said.

But even if some form of justice is achieved, no sentence or prison sentence can bring the dead back to life, Habia said.

“God will punish every oppressor,” she sighed.

Say it

Five years after the first chemical weapons attack, the Assad regime launched another chemical weapons attack in Eastern Ghouta on April 7, 2018.

According to the OPCW report, chlorine gas was used this time, resulting in approximately 43 deaths and dozens of injuries.

Assad and his main ally Russia Claims were made that Syrian rebel groups and aid workers planned the attack.

Days later, they reportedly intimidated and put masks on their victims after seizing Eastern Ghouta.

Tawfiq Diam, 45, said his wife and four children, Jodi, Mohammed, Ali and Kaml, aged 8 to 12, were killed in the chlorine attack A week after his death, regime officials “visited” his home.

“They told us that they did not use chemical weapons, but that it was terrorists and armed groups who did,” Diam recalled bitterly.

Diam added that regime officials brought in a Russian online journalist to request an interview about the chemical weapons attack.

He said he was coerced into telling reporters and security personnel what they wanted to hear.

He said he could now speak freely about the attack after long living in fear of the regime.

Habia agreed, saying the fear she felt under Assad’s rule disappeared when Assad fled.

She remembers the overwhelming joy she felt when she asked dozens of young people outside her home why they were celebrating on December 8th.

“They told me: ‘Bashar, the donkey is finally gone.'”