Ahmad al-Charaa (Abu Mohammad al-Jolani), the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), arrived on Sunday in Syria’s capital, Damascus hours after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Charaa appeared with several of his fighters and was surrounded by supporters. He was filmed entering the iconic Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. He addressed the Syrian people from this location. “Assad left Syria a playground for Iranian ambitions, spread sectarianism, and turned Syria into a hub for captagon production”, he said. He added that the country had been turned into a site of repression and exploitation, with widespread suffering among its population. He underlined that the fall of Assad was a result of a “purely Syrian” effort.
Earlier, the opposition leader reiterated his commitment to a Free Syria. “There is no going back,” he said. “We will continue the path we began, aiming for a free Syria, free from tyranny, foreign intervention, and sectarianism.”
