White Lies: 'Syria Civil Defense' Caught Faking Rescues, Doctoring Dead Children

According to SWEDHR, which paid attention to "questionable" cases of chemical attacks in Aleppo, Syria, including the incident on Sarmin, Idlib, on April 15, 2015, medical rescue scenarios depicted in White Helmets videos had obviously been staged. Namely, no substance (e.g. adrenaline) was injected into the infant while the ‘medic' or doctor introduced the syringe-needle in a simulated intracardiac-injection maneuver, which was considered sufficient to raise a hypothesis that the child might in fact have died because of the injection procedure.

While the While Helmets themselves attributed the infant deaths to chlorine gas, this was disputed by SWEDHR. Additionally, a UK doctor ventured that the deaths could instead be attributed to drug overdose, most likely opiates, the Indicter reported.

However, SWEDHR stressed that it has never accused the White Helmets of "murdering children," nor has it directed similar accusations against the personnel showed in the video published by White Helmets. According to a SWEDHR statement, denouncing an article by the website Veterans Today, which was published under the headline of "Swedish Medical Associations Says White Helmets Murdered Kids for Fake Gas Attack Videos," this formulation was "utterly inaccurate" and did not represent SWEDHR's true position on the issue. By its own admission, SWEDHR "took special care" in formulating its conclusion in order to avoid accusing the group of killing intentionally.

Previously, SWEDHR ventured to disprove the wide-spread allegations that Syrian government forces have systematically used helicopters to drop chlorine gas on civilians in rebel-held areas of the country. According to SWEDHR, a critical analysis of evidence illustrates that the blame rests with Syrian rebel forces.

​"As outlandish as it may sound, it's quite likely that Islamist opposition forces in Syria are behind all of these events. Surprisingly specific and hard-to-deny visual clues suggest rebels are murdering the victims themselves using different methods, and lodging false claims as cover, to shift the blame," Adam Larson, an independent investigator in Spokane, Washington, wrote in the Indicter.

Professor Marcello Ferrada de Noli, formerly with the Karoilinska Institute and Harvard Medical School, is the founder and chairman of SWEDHR and the editor-in-chief of The Indicter and CEO of Libertarian Books — Sweden.

The so-called Syrian Civil Defense, commonly known as the White Helmets, was founded in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2013 by former British officer James Le Mesurier, who underwent training courses offered by the Turkish Search and Rescue Association. In the ensuing years, SCD grew to a full-fledged organization of some 3,000 volunteers operating from over a hundred local civil defense centers across Syria. SCD is supported by the aid agencies of a number of external donor governments, such as the UK Commonwealth Office, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and, most notably, the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

Meanwhile, the process of glorification of the White Helmets goes on in the Western world. In 2016, the White Helmets received the Right Livelihood award, which is commonly called the "alternative Nobel Prize." In February 2017, an eponymous a 40-minute documentary about the White Helmets by director Orlando von Einsiedel won an Oscar for best documentary short feature, whereas celebrity actor George Clooney voiced plans of developing a feature version of the film.

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