A man identified as an American citizen from Missouri named Travis Timmerman was discovered in Syria Thursday, just days after being released from a prison in the suburbs of Damascus. He had been in custody for more than six months.
During the occupation of Syria and the overthrow of Bashar Assad's regime, rebel forces stormed regime prisons and freed thousands of prisoners. One of them was the American citizen. In an interview with CBS, Timmerman, 29, said that seven months ago he was arrested in Syria, after he had spent a month in Lebanon. He arrived at the Syrian border without a visa, tried to cross into the country and was arrested.
Before arriving in the Middle East, Timmerman has been in Hungary, and in late May he was listed as missing in Budapest. Authorities said he was last seen at a church and had since "left for an unknown location." The Christian American said he had come to Lebanon and Syria for "spiritual reasons as part of a religious pilgrimage."
Timmerman said that on Monday, the day after the Assad regime was overthrown, two men with Kalashnikov rifles broke into his cell. They broke the door with a hammer. "The door was broken, I woke up. I thought the guards were still here," he told the American media. He said he was surprised to learn that the prison had been taken by the rebels without a fight. "The moment we left there was no resistance, there was no real fighting," he said.
Regarding his time in prison, Timmerman said that he was treated relatively well. "They never beat me. The only thing that was bad was that I couldn't go to the bathroom whenever I wanted, only three times a day." Timmerman said that he had heard of young people being tortured in prison, but that he was not treated violently. He last spoke with his family on the phone three weeks ago from the prison in Damascus.
After his release from the Syrian prison, Timmerman, along with other prisoners, attempted to walk toward the Jordanian border. He was seen wandering barefoot in a neighborhood in southern Damascus, and residents offered him lodging and a place to stay. On Thursday, videos from Syria showing Timmerman as a free man were released online.
Syrian rebels release inmates from prison in Damascus
In the video, Timmerman could be seen lying on a mattress under a blanket in what appeared to be a private house. A group of men in the video said that he was being treated well and would be safely returned home. It was not immediately clear where Timmerman had been held.
As the video emerged online of Timmerman, he was initially mistaken by some for Austin Tice, an American journalist who went missing in Syria 12 years ago.
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Tice disappeared while at a checkpoint west of Damascus in August 2012 – a period of severe escalation in the country's civil war. In a video released a few weeks later, he was seen blindfolded and surrounded by armed men. This was the last footage of him. The Assad regime denied that they were holding him or that they were responsible for the kidnapping of the American journalist.
U.S. media has reported that the United States currently is making efforts to locate Tice, in the wake of the overthrow of the Assad regime. The White House announced that President Joe Biden has spoken with Turkey and other countries, in order to obtain information about his whereabouts. The Americans believe that he is still alive.