On December 29, 2024, Simay Azadi conducted an exclusive interview with Ammar al-Salmo, board member and one of the founders of the Syrian Civil Defense (the White Helmets) and asked him about the Syrian revolution and what the White Helmets have discovered in Assad’s prisons.
The Syrian Civil Defense group was founded in 2013 with the aim of helping the Syrian people during the bombings and attacks by the Iran-backed Assad’s regime. The White Helmets consist of 3,300 volunteers. Over the years, they have saved countless Syrians, including many children, during and after heavy bombings and their subsequent destruction.
Since the fall of Assad, the White Helmets have dedicated themselves to rebuilding their country, while playing a key role in uncovering the atrocities that occurred in Assad’s prisons, such as the infamous Sednaya prison in Damascus.
Before joining the White Helmets, Ammar al-Salmo, was an English teacher in eastern Aleppo. Yet, after witnessing the killing and suffering of the Syrian people, Ammar, like many of his colleagues, chose to dedicate himself to help his compatriots and save their lives.
In his exclusive interview with Simay Azadi, al-Salmo said that the Syrian revolution was inevitable, adding that the Assad regime would not have survived a single day without the support of the Iranian regime’s militias in Syria.
Concerning the new evidence of Assad’s crimes following his downfall, al-Salmo said that after the fall of the regime, they realized that Syria was like a “huge mass grave” and that the regime not only arrested, tortured, and murdered people but also buried them in unmarked mass graves.