UN investigator says Syrian Islamists using sarin gas

From Al Arabiya:

The deadly nerve agent sarin has been used by Syrian opposition fighters during the war-torn country’s conflict, U.N. human rights investigator Carla del Ponte said late Sunday.

“According to the testimonies we have gathered, the rebels have used chemical weapons, making use of sarin gas,” del Ponte, a former war crimes prosecutor, said in an interview with Swiss radio late on Sunday, according to AFP news agency.

“We still have to deepen our investigation, verify and confirm (the findings) through new witness testimony, but according to what we have established so far, it is at the moment opponents of the regime who are using sarin gas,” she added.

She stressed that the U.N. commission of inquiry on Syria, which she is a part of, had far from finished its investigation.

The commission, which is set to present its latest findings to the UN Human Rights Council during its next session in June, might still find proof that the Syrian regime was also using this type of chemical weapons, del Ponte said.

Apparently, there is no direct evidence, so it is a little irresponsible to make that claim based only on witness testimony.

If true, the question is - where did they get it from? Is Al Qaeda or other groups developing sarin themselves, or did they steal it?

Just when you thought things couldn't get messier in Syria...