German companies helped the Syrian regime of the late Hafez Assad and his son, current President Bashar Assad, produce its chemical weapons program, according to declassified documents whose contents were revealed on Friday by the German weekly Der Spiegel.Citing Foreign Ministry files that recently came to light by dint of the expiration of a 30-year embargo, Der Spiegel says that German companies knowingly colluded with Syrian and Iraqi government officials, helping them build a covert chemical weapons program under the guise of “agricultural and medical research.”The publication goes on to accuse the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel of seeking to keep secret any information that links German firms to Syria’s arsenal of chemical arms.