Thread by @bellingcat

Over the weekend, Wikileaks published an email from an OPCW employee, claiming that an OPCW report “misrepresents the facts he and his colleagues discovered on the ground”.

We've written about this email here.

bellingcat.com/news/2019/11/2…

This email has since been used to attack the OPCW and undermine trust in its Douma investigations. 

However, the report that this email refers to was never published in that form.

The final OPCW Douma report was published 9 months later and it clearly took into account concerns raised by the employee.

For every point raised in the email, the OPCW either used wording in line with the recommendations of the email, conducted further study, or provided further information.

For example, the final report used this exact term recommended in the email.

Another example: the final report did in fact include a detailed Epidemiology and discussions of symptoms.

After the date of the email the OPCW also redeployed in order to conduct further interviews and consulted more toxicologists.

Every single point in the email is addressed in some shape or form in the final report.

If reporters from @MailOnline, @repubblica, @stundin & @wikileaks had bothered to actually read the OPCW reports carefully they may have actually noticed this.

@MailOnline @repubblica @stundin @wikileaks Instead, they have chosen to push the idea that the OPCW somehow "sexed-up" their reports.

A simple comparison of the email against the final OPCW FFM report demonstrates the opposite. bellingcat.com/news/2019/11/2…