American man found near Damascus after months in Syrian prison

An American man, detained for months in a Syrian prison after entering the country on foot, described being freed by men armed with hammers as rebels toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

The man, who later identified himself as Travis Timmerman to BBC news partner CBS in the United States, was found by residents near the capital, Damascus.

It comes as rebels say they intend to close Assad’s notoriously tough prisons and locate those involved in the torture or murder of detainees.

“We will pursue them in Syria and we call on countries to hand over those who fled so we can achieve justice,” said rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, also known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani.

Images posted on social media showed Timmerman lying on a couch while residents spoke to local reporters.

He said he had been arrested upon entering the country seven months ago.

the american He was reported missing in May, having last been seen in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol and Hungarian authorities.

On Monday, a day after rebels took control of Damascus and overthrew Assad, Timmerman said two men armed with a hammer broke down the door to his prison.

“I was knocked down, it woke me up,” he said.

“I thought the guards were still there, so I thought the war might have been more active than it ended up being… Once we got out, there was no resistance, there was no real fighting.”

The 30-year-old man said he left prison with a large group of people and had been trying to reach Jordan.

He said he “had some scary moments” when he left the prison, adding that since then he was more concerned about finding a place to sleep.

However, local people were receptive to their requests for food and assistance, he told reporters.

“Most of them came to see me,” Timmerman said.

Syria’s new interim government “released and secured” Timmerman, it confirmed Thursday in a message on the Telegram messaging service.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington was “working to bring (Mr Timmerman) home”.

Blinken, speaking during a visit to Jordan, added that he could not give any details about “exactly what is going to happen.”

Thousands of prisoners have been freed since Assad’s fall over the weekend.

Images have shown men, women and, in some cases, children emerging from overcrowded, windowless cells, often disoriented and unaware of what had happened outside.

However, Mr Timmerman appears to have been relatively well treated, telling CBS: “I feel good. They’ve fed me and given me water, so I feel good.”

He added that he had used a mobile phone during his detention and had spoken to his family three weeks ago.

Speaking to the American media NBC, Timmerman said he had crossed the mountains between Lebanon and Syria on a “pilgrimage” and had “been reading the Scriptures a lot.”

He declined the opportunity to contact U.S. officials.

Richard Timmerman, who identified himself as the freed prisoner’s great-uncle, said he was working in Chicago when he last heard from him.

“The family had been looking for him, but no one could find anything about him,” he told the New York Times.

“He is very responsible,” he added. “He’s not a criminal type of person.”

On Tuesday, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the United States had asked Syria’s main rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), to help locate and free American journalist Austin Tice.

Tice, a freelance journalist, is believed to have been taken prisoner near Damascus on August 14, 2012 while covering the country’s civil war.

He was last seen in a video, blindfolded and apparently distressed, posted online weeks after his capture. The United States believes he was being held by the Assad regime.

President Joe Biden has said the United States believes Tice is alivebut they must indicate their location.

Syria’s new leadership said Thursday that the search for Tice was “ongoing” and that it was willing to “directly cooperate” with the United States to find Americans who went missing under the Assad regime.

The now-collapsed regime was famous for its extremely harsh prisons, where the UK-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates that nearly 60,000 people were tortured and killed.

Across Syria this week, families desperate to find their loved ones have flocked to these dark prisons.

The Syrian Civil Defense Organization, known as the White Helmets, has been assisting in the search, including at the infamous Saydnaya prison complex, described by human rights groups as the “human slaughterhouse.”

“We are looking for secret prisons in several areas of Damascus,” Raed Saleh, director of the White Helmets, told the BBC.

“We can’t say much about this, but we are looking.”

The White Helmets, known for pulling survivors from the rubble during Syria’s devastating civil war, say they helped recover thousands of detainees from prisons.

But many families continue searching in vain.

“What happened in Saydnaya is very painful for the families who were waiting for their loved ones,” Saleh acknowledged.

“Our inability to locate anyone else at Saydnaya after the initial release of the prisoners means that the people who were there are either dead or elsewhere.

“We have at least two teams searching for prisoners.

“A team with police sniffer dogs is searching for survivors. Another team specializes in picking locks and entering cells.”