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The man told reporters that his name was Travis Timmerman and that he had entered Syria on a religious pilgrimage. He said that he had been detained for months.
- Dec. 12, 2024, 7:39 a.m. ET
The Syrian authorities said on Thursday that a foreign man who had been imprisoned while Bashar al-Assad was in power had been found outside Damascus and handed over to the rebel group that now controls the capital.
In interviews with international news media, the man appeared to identify himself as Travis Timmerman, an American who is believed to have gone missing from Budapest, Hungary, this year. In a video aired on Thursday by the news channel Al Arabiya, someone is heard asking the man if his name is Travis Timmerman. The man says, “That’s right.”
Hisham al-Eid, the mayor of Al-Thihabiyeh, a poor, partly rural town east of Damascus, said that the man had been found on Thursday morning on a main road. He was barefoot and cold but otherwise seemed to be in good health, Mr. al-Eid said.
The man told reporters that he had entered Syria from Lebanon on a Christian pilgrimage, and had been detained for several months. He said he had received food and water while in detention, and was allowed to go to the bathroom three times a day.
In another video posted by Al Arabiya, the man, wearing a beard and a gray hooded top, said that he had been held in a cell alone. When asked how he was freed, he said that on Monday, someone “took a hammer and they broke my door down.”
It was not immediately clear where the man had been held. The fall of the authoritarian Assad regime over the weekend to rebel forces led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has prompted the release of many prisoners held in a sprawling network of detention centers operated by the former government.
This year, the Missouri State Highway Patrol put out a missing persons flyer for Pete Timmerman, 29, saying he had last been located in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, on May 28. In August, the Hungarian police put out a call looking for “Travis Pete Timmerman” and shared photos of a man who resembles the one in the Al Arabiya interview.
The man told CBS News on Thursday that he had been in contact with his family three weeks ago, using a phone that he had while he was in prison. He said that he had left the prison where he had been held with a large group of people and that he had been trying to get to Jordan. It was unclear how he had arrived in the town where he was found.
Asked by reporters whether he had processed his newfound freedom, he said, “I still haven’t really thought about that,” CBS reported. “I’ve been more worried about finding a place to sleep each night since then.”
Lynsey Chutel, Andrew Higgins, Ismaeel Naar and Barnabas Heincz contributed reporting.
