We strongly urge those who, in trying to impose their opinion on U.N. experts ahead of the results of an investigation, announce the possibility of military action against Syria, to exercise discretion and not make tragic mistakes

However, from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack.

There is lots of evidence delivered by independent experts onsite [a nun from a local convent, other eyewitnesses and Western reporters] and European and U.S. experts, including twelve retired officers of the Pentagon and the CIA who sent an open letter to President Barack Obama to explain how the case had been falsified, unfortunately, a lot had been done before the St. Petersburg meeting by bad people who used poisonous chemical substances largely, in our opinion, to provoke a retaliation strike against the regime and shifted the responsibility for the use of chemical weapons, although that was totally illogical and Russian President Vladimir Putin said so many times.

Evidence given by witnesses and journalists showed that rebels acquired “some shells from abroad that they had never seen and had no idea of how to use them, and then finally they used them,” Lavrov said.

Russia is still saying that it was the rebels who fired the chemical weapons on Aug. 21 — not the Assad regime?Yes, we believe there is very good evidence to substantiate this.

Are you willing to present this evidence?Yes, I just presented a compilation of evidence to John Kerry when we met a couple of hours ago. This evidence is not something revolutionary. It’s available on the Internet. They are reports by journalists who visited the sites and talked to the combatants, who said they were given some unusual rockets and ammunition by some foreign country and they didn’t know how to use them. There is also evidence from the nuns living in the monastery nearby who visited the site. You can read the assessments by the chemical weapons experts who say that the images shown do not correspond to a real situation if chemical weapons were used. And we also know about the open letter sent to President Obama by former operatives of the CIA saying the assertion that the [Syrian] government used chemical weapons was fake. So you don’t need to have any spy reports to make your own conclusions, you only need to carefully watch what is available in public.

According to the Swiss newspaper Le Courrier, Agnès-Mariam was “comfortable among [Assad’s] security services,” and she told their reporter it was hoped he could “dismantle the propaganda of Western media.”

Ghouta, the main area to the east of Damascus which came under attack, was already "deserted", so why were there were so many civilian casualties?

Why are so many children seen in the videos without their parents? There is "a flagrant lack of real families"

Why are there so few women in the videos and why are so many people unidentified?

Why is there so little evidence of burials?

In response, Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director of Human Rights Watch, stated "There's just no basis for the claims advanced by Mother Agnes. She is not a professional video forensic analyst... we have found no evidence to indicate any of the videos were fabricated.". In addition to that, he addressed the questions raised by her report

There were tens of thousands of civilians trapped in the Ghouta area of Damascus, according to very regular reports received by Human Rights Watch

Children were often sleeping in the basements of buildings in significant concentrations because of the intense shelling and that is why so many died (Sarin gas accumulates at low levels)

The dead and those injured in the chemical attack were moved from place to place and room to room both at the clinics and ultimately for burial

There were many men and women who were victims of the attacks. But there were separate rooms for the bodies of children, men and women so they could be washed for burial

Almost all of the victims have been buried

Human rights researchers have spoken to the relatives of Alawite women and children abducted by rebels. None of them said they had recognised their loved ones in the gas attack videos There's also the third major claim Lavrov was pushing, that former CIA and Pentagon officers "saying the assertion that the [Syrian] government used chemical weapons was fake". Michael Kelley of Business Insider looked at this claim , stating

This obviously seemed like a very significant development, but one that hadn't been very thoroughly investigated by those making the claim. Investigations by Storyful and others brought to attention that fact that the date displayed on YouTube videos from Syria are in fact the local time where the servers are located, in this case California, which is several hours behind Syria. This results in videos being uploaded in the early morning in Syria being dated the day before. It's possible to confirm the actual time a video was uploaded from metadata attached to the video, and all the videos from the August 21st attack were confirmed as being uploaded on August 21st using this data.On August 25th the Russian foreign ministry urged against " hurried conclusions ", statingFollowing that statement Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, held a press conference , and referenced the now discredited claims about YouuTube upload times; "There is information that videos were posted on the internet hours before the purported attack, and other reasons to doubt the rebel narrative", adding "Those involved with the incident wanted to sabotage the upcoming Geneva peace talks. Maybe that was the motivation of those who created this story. The opposition obviously does not want to negotiate peacefully." It seems the Russian foreign ministry's warning against "hurried conclusions" only went one way.On August 29th the small independent media organisation Mint Press published a piece, Syrians In Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack , which the Russian foreign ministry would cite in a number of future statements. The article claimed that "rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack."The article has generated a great deal of controversy, not least for it's content. One of the two claimed authors, Dale Gavlak, has now distanced herself from the article, claiming her contribution to the article was editing non-native speaker Yahya Ababneh's use of English, and helping Yahya pitch it to Mint Press. She claims she clearly told Mint Press "this should go under Yahya Ababneh's byline. I helped him write up his story but he should get all the credit for this." As her reputation was used to give the article by the virtually unknown Ababneh credibility, this controversy has brought the content of the article into doubt.As for the article itself, the claims of rebel involvement in the August 21st attack actually seems quite thin. There's talk of an accident in tunnels releasing chemicals, killing a number of rebels in the area, but it doesn't claim this event and the August 21st attack are linked. In fact, only the headline (which Dale Gavlak told me was written by Mint Press) and this section makes any reference to the August 21st attackBeyond the headline and that one paragraph, there's no further claims that the rebels were responsible for the August 21st attack, and certainly none of the quotes from locals link the rebels to the August 21st attack. This didn't stop it becoming part of Russia's ongoing attempts to blame the opposition for the August 21st attack.On September 16th Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, came out with more claims about the August 21st attack, dropping the earlier claims of YouTube videos being uploaded before the attack took place.Putting aside claims about nuns and retired Pentagon and CIA officers for now, you'll note he mentions "other eyewitnesses and Western reporters" as "independent experts onsite". In a later comments made on September 22nd he's reported as sayingClaims he repeated in a September 25th interview with the Washington Post As far as I'm aware, apart from the Yahya Ababneh's Mint Press article, there's no other journalists who have claimed to have visited the site, and recounted the story of combatants who were "given some unusual rockets and ammunition by some foreign country and they didn’t know how to use them.". It seems clear Lavrov has repeatedly referred to the Mint Press article, which has become increasingly controversial by the day.Lavrov and the Russian foreign ministry also repeatedly refers to "nuns living in the monastery nearby who visited the site". This seems to refer to the controversial nun, who has made a number of statements in the past supporting the Syrian government, including claiming the Syrian opposition were responsible for the notorious Houla massacre, and has been described asOn September 6th she was interviewed by Russia Today ( 'Footage of chemical attack in Syria is fraud' ), and made a number of claims about the attack, which were later repeated in a 50 page report her organisation prepared. According to a BBC report on her work , her report asked