Interview: White Helmet Leader, Raed al-Saleh, Gets His Facts Confused

The White Helmets are finally emerging from the shadows, in a last-ditch attempt to prop-up their sophisticated, multi-million dollar PR facade – which is rapidly crumbling alongside the West’s “moderate rebel” myth, both conveniently used to disguise the Western and Gulf States’ terrorist gangs and counter-gangs in Syria.
Amazingly, even after most of the terrorist-occupied areas which the White Helmets work have been cleared by the Syrian Arab Army, White Helmets leader Raed al-Saleh is still sticking to his USAID/UKFCO script claiming there are still somehow 3,700 volunteers operating as “rescuers” in Syria.
Also, he claims that Al-Qaeda’s unofficial mop-up crew (aka ISIS’s fire brigade) has somehow saved ‘115,000 lives’ and yet the White Helmets cannot produce even one video or accident and medical report from one of these alleged life-saving rescues – leading critics to assume that this is just a very big number which the group is using to raise funds and keep this defunct gravy train going – at the expense of UK, EU and American taxpayers.
Of course, the reason they cant provide one document archive or analysis of their alleged rescue tally is because they are not required to do so by their handlers in the UK Government and interface “NGO”, Mayday Rescue, founded in 2014 by James Le Mesurier, the ex-MI5 operative who also founded the White Helmets in Turkey in March 2013. This fact is aptly  demonstrated by a recent Freedom of Information request, responded to by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office in customary obscurantist fashion:

Going Underground reports…
In a talk with RT, White Helmets’ boss vehemently denied any links to terrorists, instead employing controversy theories to blame forces “linked” to Syria and Russia for attempts to ruin reputation of his controversial group.
Raed al-Saleh, the head of the White Helmets [but strangely living full-time in Istanbul] did his utmost to defend the controversial organization’s public image during a contentious talk with Afshin Rattansi, host of RT’s Going Underground show. Speaking via Skype from Istanbul, he set the tone for the entire interview, claiming 115,000 people were saved by the Western-funded organization “from under the rubble during the aerial bombing from Syrian regime and Russia.”
Watch:

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Al-Saleh and Rattansi spoke on the heels of reports that multiple White Helmets members were provided free passage into Jordan via Israel after claiming to be at risk in southern provinces recently liberated from U.S Coalition-backed extremist groups by the SAA and Russian Amnesty and Reconciliation teams. Commenting on the programme, Saleh acknowledged “we currently have around 3,700 volunteers who are working in the areas that we are able to access,” but denied to disclose whereabouts of the smaller number of evacuees in Jordan, only briefly confirming “they are still in Jordan.”
Meanwhile, controversies surround the White Helmets’ operations in Syria, with locals accusing the self-proclaimed civil defense group of running a terrorist support operation. In Daraa in June 2017,  one of their members was filmed celebrating with a group of U.S-backed Southern Front militants and disposing the bodies of murdered and dismembered prisoners of war from the SAA. Again, in the southern province, in May 2017, White Helmets were filmed celebrating the extra-judicial execution of an unknown civilian by terrorist groups. Just after the man was shot in the head, White Helmets appeared to scoop up the body in one of their mopping-up-after-terrorism stunts.
When repeatedly asked about alleged terrorist connections, al-Saleh avoided giving straightforward answers, saying: “When we established the organization, there were rules and regulations in relation to the international humanitarian law.” The White Helmets boss said, however, that “we saw no infiltrations [by terrorists].”
He then tried to pin the blame on Damascus and Moscow for targeting civilians, claiming again the White Helmets evolved into an “international humanitarian entity working for the service of the Syrian people and to save them from under the rubble after the shelling by Syrian regime and Russia.”
Proceeding with the vague whataboutist logic, he suggested “misuse of the photographs comes from groups that are active on social media and that are affiliated to Russia and the Syrian regime.” The mystery groups “are constantly working on ruining our reputation,” Saleh offered.
Notably, al-Saleh acknowledged the White Helmets do work with the so-called Free Syrian Police, a group which, in turn, is said to have links to Al-Nusra Front. This is according to a BBC Panorama investigation called ‘Jihadis you pay for’, in which they investigated the use of British aid money for terrorist purposes.
“I am surprised, but, perhaps, that explains the extent to which this group and its members and its leaders are considered to be protected by the intelligence agencies who are behind the funding of them in the UK, in the US and the EU member states,” Vanessa Beeley, a UK-based independent researcher and journalist, told Rattansi.
She then dismissed some of al-Saleh’s claims, saying they do not explain “mounting civilian testimony that I gathered in both East Aleppo and East Ghouta that fundamentally accuse the White Helmets of crimes against the Syrian people, of participating in numerous crimes committed by Al-Nusra Front and other extremist factions.”
READ MORE WHITE HELMETS NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire White Helmets Files
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