Bashar al-Assad has appointed Mohamed Khaled Nasri as a Director General of the Center for Scientific Studies and Research, succeeding Amr Armanazi who held the post for 22 years.

Nasri, who ran the Institute 1000 in the scientific research center, is considered as one the masterminds of Syrian chemical weapons and the one who hid chemical stockpiles in secret depots near Damascus, according to Zaman al-Wasl’s documents.

In September 2018, an official document obtained by Zaman al-Wasl and signed by Nasri, then Institute 1000 director, revealed that the Syrian regime had transferred most of chemical weapons stockpiles from Jamraya town in 2013 to secret depots near Damascus after the deadly Sarin gas attack on Eastern Ghouta suburbs.

Moving most of the chemical arsenal from the Institute 1000 to 105th Brigade near the Presidential Palace in Damascus was on September 19, 2013 at the same day the regime handed the UN Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) a list of chemical sites in the war-torn country, following the Eastern Ghouta Chemical attack on August 21, 2013 when more than 1460 died in the nerve gas attack, two weeks before the arrival of the United Nations inspectors on October 3.