Few thought that the Syrian regime's promise to destroy its chemical weapons would be the end of the story. Brigadier-General Zaher al-Saket, a former chemical weapons chief in President Bashar al-Assad's own army, certainly did not.

Brig Gen Saket says he was ordered three times to use chemical weapons against his own people, but could not. He insists that all such orders had to come from the top — President Assad himself — despite insistent denials by the regime that it has never used chemical weapons. He also claims to have his own intelligence that the Syrian president is evading the terms of a Russian-brokered deal to destroy the chemical weapons by transferring some of the stocks to his allies; Hezbollah, in Lebanon, and Iran.

Brig Gen Saket spoke to The Sunday Telegraph, his first interview with a Western newspaper, as Mr Assad confirmed for the first time what he, and much of the rest of the world already knew, that the regime has a huge arsenal of chemical weapons, and the delivery systems to go with them.