The leak of Sarin occurred evidently. Why? Before accusations can be made the cause of the 'gas release' has to be known.

Assumptions cannot just be made for the convenience of any opposition or Assad forces. The facts have to be found and charges brought.

By Dominic Evans and Khaled Yacoub Oweis

BEIRUT/AMMAN | Wed Aug 21, 2013 10:32am EDT
 

...Western and regional countries (click here) called for U.N. chemical weapons investigators - who arrived in Damascus just three days ago - to be urgently dispatched to the scene of one of the deadliest incidents of the two-year-old civil war.
Images, including some taken by freelance photographers and supplied to Reuters, showed scores of bodies including of small children, laid out on the floor of a clinic with no visible signs of injuries. Reuters was not independently able to verify the cause of their death. The Syrian government denied that it had used chemical arms. George Sabra, one of the leading opponents of Assad, said the death toll was 1,300 killed by poison gas rained down on suburbs east of Damascus. "Today's crimes are ... not the first time the regime has used chemical weapons. But they constitute a turning point in the regime's operations," he told a news conference in Istanbul. "This time it was for annihilation rather than terror." An opposition monitoring group, citing figures compiled from medical clinics in the Damascus suburbs, put the death toll at 494 - 90 percent of them killed by gas, the rest by bombing and conventional arms. The rebel Syrian National Coalition said 650 people had been killed....

As of May of this year Russia was stating the rebels were producing their own Sarin gas. There is also a report at that time from the UN stating the rebels were using Sarin. The evidence has to be clear.

The facts have to be known. It is a reach to believe the rebels have this capacity, but, if they had access to the production plant they could have and most likely would have used Sarin or accidentally released it.

Carla Del Ponte: "I was a little bit stupefied by the first indication of the use of nerve gas by the opposition"

6 May 2013 Last updated at 11:06 ET

Carla Del Ponte told Swiss TV (click here) that there were "strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof".
Ms Del Ponte did not rule out the possibility that government forces might also have used chemical weapons.
Later, the commission stressed that it had "not reached conclusive findings" as to their use by any parties.
"As a result, the commission is not in a position to further comment on the allegations at this time," a statement added.
The BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva says the statement was terse and shows that the UN was taken by surprise at Ms Del Ponte's remarks.
The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria was established in August 2011 to examine alleged violations of human rights in the Syrian uprising. It is due to issue its latest report next month.