American released from prison in Syria after rebels overthrow president

By SARAH EL DEEB and NICK INGRAM, The Associated Press

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — An American who disappeared seven months ago into former Syrian President Bashar Assad’s notorious prison system said early Friday he was released by the “liberators” who arrived in Damascus a day after the longtime ruler fled the capital.

Travis Timmerman called his release a “blessing” when he spoke to The Associated Press from a hotel room in Damascus, where he arrived late Thursday. He was among the thousands of people released from Syria’s sprawling military prisons this week after rebels reached Damascus, overthrowing Assad and ending his family’s 54-year rule.

Timmerman, 29, said he had gone to Syria on a Christian pilgrimage and was not ill-treated while in Palestine Branch, a notorious detention facility operated by Syrian intelligence. He said he was freed by “the liberators who came into the prison and knocked the door down (of his cell) with a hammer.”

The political affairs office of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group that led the lightning offensive to topple Assad’s government, said the group had secured his release.

“We affirm our readiness to cooperate directly with the U.S. administration to complete the search for American citizens disappeared by the former Assad regime,” the group said, adding that a search was underway for Austin Tice, an American journalist who went missing in Syria 12 years ago. An official with the group later said it was arranging for Timmerman to leave Syria, but gave no details.

Timmerman said he was released Monday morning alongside a young Syrian man and 70 female prisoners, some of whom had their children with them.

He had been held separately from Syrian and other Arab prisoners and said he didn’t know of any other Americans held in the facility.

“I was there seven months. There were women there up above me,” Timmerman said. He heard the women singing and teaching their children and could hear some of the men being beaten regularly. “I was never beaten,” he said.

He was detained after he crossed into Syria from a mountain along the eastern Lebanese town of Zahle in June. He was questioned for three and half hours by interrogators who thought he must be a spy. In a brief second interview, they searched his mobile phone, and in the last interview, he started discussing his dreams with his captors.

He said their threat of using violence against him was “implicit” because he could hear daily beatings next door. But his captors let him use his mobile to call his family three weeks ago. At the time, Timmerman didn’t tell his family he was in Damascus, only that he was fine.

He said later in his detention, he could hear explosions — at a time when Israel was intensifying its strikes in Syria. Israel’s war with the Hezbollah militant group had intensified in September, before a ceasefire was reached last month.

Timmerman is from Urbana, Missouri, about 50 miles north of Springfield in the southwestern part of the state. He earned a finance degree from Missouri State University in 2017.

Timmerman’s mother, Stacey Gardiner, told the AP that as of Thursday evening, she hadn’t spoken to her son. She said he told her he was visiting Prague and Budapest, Hungary, to “write about different churches.” She said she last heard from him in May, when he said he was going somewhere without internet and that he would call when he had access again. Then he stopped replying to calls and texts and she didn’t know whether he was alive or dead.

“I couldn’t help him, and that broke my heart more and more each day,” Gardiner said. “I just want my baby (to) come home.”

After getting out of jail, he spent two nights in Damascus, one in an abandoned apartment in the old town and another at a new friend’s house.

He then started walking toward Jordan, when a Syrian family found him barefoot on a main road in the countryside of Damascus early Thursday.

At first some mistook him for Tice.

Mouaz Mostafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a U.S.-based nonprofit group, who was in Damascus learned of Timmerman’s location, reached him and contacted US authorities about him.

Timmerman is recovering until the rebels can figure out how to hand him to U.S. authorities, Moustafa said.

President Joe Biden has said his administration believed Tice was alive and was committed to bringing him home, though he also acknowledged on Sunday that “we have no direct evidence” of his status. The case has frustrated U.S. intelligence officials for years.

“This is a priority for the United States,” Blinken said.

Tice, who has had his work published by The Washington Post, McClatchy newspapers and others, disappeared at a checkpoint in a contested area west of Damascus in August 2012 as the Syrian civil war intensified.

A video released weeks after Tice went missing showed him blindfolded and held by armed men. He hasn’t been heard from since. Assad’s government had denied that it was holding him.

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