There are no viable chemical weapons left in Libya and even if there were, there are no functioning missile systems with which to fire them at Malta, according to a weapons expert who surveyed the country’s arms stockpile.
“In my view and from my experience there are no chemical weapons left in Libya and certainly no chemical weapons have been moved to Misurata, for use, anyway,” award-winning weapons expert Ben Remfrey told Times of Malta.
“Even if there were, and they landed in the hands of Isis [also known as Islamic State], there are no delivery systems with which to fire them at Malta or [mainland] Europe.”
His comments come after Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper recently quoted an anonymous military source saying that militias fighting the Libyan Army (allied to the Tobruk government) seized large quantities of mustard gas and the nerve gas sarin from a weapons depot in the Al Jufra District.
However, Mr Remfrey believes the source quoted may have fabricated or exaggerated the information as part of an attempt by Egypt, the Tobruk government and their military ally, General Khalifa Hiftar, to have the arms embargo on Libya lifted because they are fast running out of ammunition.
“It’s all part of the smoke and mirrors that Libya has become unfortunately,” he said.
Following the story in Asharq Al-Awsat, other outlets speculated that the material was taken by militias from Misurata and transported all the way back to their coastal town.
The weapons, acquired by Muammar Gaddafi in the 1990s, were believed to have been completely destroyed. The regime itself had started dismantling the stockpiles in 2004, under supervision, as part of a process to normalise relations with the West but the process was disrupted by the revolution.
However, the dismantling continued and towards the end of 2013, the Libyan authorities, the US and international observers, declared that the cache had been completely destroyed.
But on Sunday, the story in the London-based newspaper raised doubts about that version of events.
“Unfortunately [chemical weapons] exist in locations known to the militias, who have seized large amounts of them to use in their war against the [Libyan] army,” the unnamed source told the newspaper.
According to witnesses, cited by the newspaper, cone-shaped tanks were used to transfer the chemicals. Moreover, a video recording obtained by Asharq Al-Awsat purportedly shows militants conducting chemical weapons tests. In the footage, a militant is shown firing a projectile, producing flames followed by a cloud of dense white smoke that covers a wide area.
The source also warned that the weapons could fall into the hands of Islamic State, which is now believed to have adherents operating from the town of Derna and the coastal city of Sirte.
However, Mr Remfrey, an MBE and retired British Army commando engineer, who worked in a swathe of warzones around the world and consulted on the successful clearing of Rwanda from landmines in 2009, insisted to Times of Malta that the chemical weapons had been destroyed.
“The destruction of chemical weapons was well under way under Gaddafi. After the revolution the work continued and was completed,” he said.
He has himself surveyed Libya’s weapons depots since 2011 for a private consultancy firm and his job was to locate unconventional weapons.
He left Libya in June 2011, when the internal conflict escalated but remains engaged with Libya.
If that is what they took back to Misurata they won’t have clogged sinks for 20 years
During his surveying on the ground, he had managed to obtain a detailed picture of the “extraordinary” hoard of thousands of weapons, amassed during more than 40 years of sustained spending on defence by the Gaddafi regime.
“I personally inspected those cone-shaped vats described in the report, which contain the chemicals that the rebels were meant to have got their hands on. They are filled with sodium hydroxide. Do you know what that is? Caustic soda,” he said.
US declared that the cache was destroyed
The commercial detergent is considered a precursor that can be used to produce chemical weapons but it is part of a process which requires expertise as well as other materials that are not so easily available. Moreover, it is also used to destroy sarin gas, so it may very well be that it is a leftover from the dismantling programme.
“If that is what they took back to Misurata you can safely say they won’t have any clogged sinks for the next 20 years, but they haven’t got their hands on chemical weapons,” he said, pointing out that Libyans who worked at the weapons storage facilities were terrified of the caustic soda containers because they were convinced the material was lethal.
He also picked on the footage, which supposedly shows a militant testing the chemical weapons.
“That white smoke seen in the footage is phosphorous and it’s an incendiary,” he said. While it is a lethal weapon in its own right, it has nothing to do with sarin or mustard gas.
The chemical weapons depot was located in a mountainous area known as Ruwagha, about 10 miles east of Waddan, at the border with the Sahara desert.
There were two depots in this area. One of them was dedicated to conventional arms, but it was destroyed during the revolution by a Nato air strike.
“They knew exactly what they were bombing because the chemical weapons depot is literally on the other side of the hill,” Mr Remfrey said.
Though what he has to say about chemical weapons is largely good news, the same cannot be said about the situation with more conventional weapons.
“The Nato airstrikes destroyed many depots but they left many others, and a good number of them have been completely accessible to militias that have control over the territory they are in. Militants come and go, taking whatever they please. It’s a free-for-all,” he said.
There are also “an extraordinary” amount of all sorts of weapons, from small arms to machine guns to rocket-propelled grenades, shoulder-carried surface-to-air missile systems and heavy calibre long-range aerial missiles.
The positive aspect is that the latter missiles cannot be fired because the delivery systems they are built for are unusable due to neglect over the years.
However, they can be used to build landmines and what are known as improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and there is no control over the lethal weapons.
“There is a lot of proliferation. People come and go and take weapons with them. They store them elsewhere for a rainy day. There was also talk, for instance, that many Man Portable Air Defence Systems were taken over to Syria early in that conflict,” he said.
Mr Remfrey points out there are about 100 explosives storage houses chock-full of weapons and 200 open stack areas in Ruwagha site alone, which is spread over an area six kilometres by two.
His account speaks volumes of the mistakes made by the international coalition and the Libyan authorities. Many analysts, including Libyans, blame the level of violence that ensued after the revolution on the easy access to weapons and on the fact the coalition failed to secure or destroy this vast cache of arms.
Nonetheless, the problem for the warring factions, Mr Remfrey argued, is that they are running out of the ammunition for the sort of conventional weapons (machine guns, anti-tank guns, grenades and rocket-propelled grenades) being used in the largely mobile, close-proximity battles characteristic of the conflict.
“This is why [Khalifa] Hiftar is piling pressure on the international community to lift the arms embargo, because he would like to get his hands on ammunition he needs to be able to make a final ground push on Benghazi.
“And this is why I think this scaremongering about chemical weapons is simply a veiled attempt to add urgency to this plea for arms,” he said.