Åke Sellström was the UN’s chemical weapons hunter in Syria

Just over a decade has passed since the terrible reports reached the outside world from civil war Syria. The civilian population of the small town of Ghouta had been subjected to an attack with sarin gas, resulting in hundreds of deaths.

In Sweden, the phone rang with one of the world’s foremost experts on chemical warfare, Åke Sellström, who, despite the peace and quiet as a pensioner, took on the UN mission to go to Syria to find out what had happened. But it was not an easy decision to make.

– Above all, I perhaps hesitated when my partner stood me against the wall and wondered what I had agreed to. I didn’t quite realize what I was getting myself into, that was the truth. I thought it would be over in two, three weeks, he says in Nyhetsmorgan.

Was fired upon

He tells about the trip to Syria and his career as a weapons inspector for the UN in the new book “The Chemist of Peace”. Once there, he and the team came under attack and had to negotiate a cease-fire before work could even begin.

– We were shot at, probably by a militia that was working on behalf of the government and wanted to scare us so that we wouldn’t go in, he says.

Åke Sellström further tells how the cars they were in had to receive several volleys of shots where the bullets lodged in the front and side windows.

– That is said to be approximately what those windows can withstand. So the person who shot knew how to scare without harming. That’s how we perceived the situation, he says.

“I’m quite used to biting”

After being fired upon, the team decided to continue in to complete the mission.

– Then we pick up extra life jackets and push them up against the side windows and then we drive as fast as we can through this area where we were shot at, he says.

He describes chemical weapons as political weapons and as a little brother to nuclear weapons that do enormous damage. After interviewing several people on the spot, taking blood samples and samples of rockets, they had what it took to do analyses. But witnessing all the horrors in place leaves its mark and it is not easy conditions to work under.

– They bit together. I’m quite used to biting and then it comes to my back, head and stomach instead. You almost get tunnel vision and just feel that you have to make it, says Åke Sellström.