US officials are working to confirm the identify of an American man found wandering in Damascus after the downfall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Travis Timmerman says he was detained after crossing into Syria on foot seven months ago on a Christian pilgrimage.
Missouri authorities previously reported him as having gone missing in Hungary.
He appears to have been among thousands of people released from the country’s notorious prisons after rebels reached Damascus over the weekend, overthrowing former president Bashar al-Assad and ending his family’s 54-year rule.
Residents in a Damascus neighbourhood said they had found Mr Timmerman wandering around without shoes.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says American officials are working to bring Travis Timmerman home. (Reuters: Stoyan Nenov)
After video of Mr Timmerman was posted online on Thursday, he was initially mistaken for another American man, journalist Austin Tice, who went missing in Syria 12 years ago.
In an interview with Al-Arabiya TV, Mr Timmerman said he could hear young men being tortured from his jail cell, but was treated decently.
“It was OK. I was fed. I was watered. The one difficulty was that I couldn’t go to the bathroom when I wanted to,” he said.
“I was not beaten and the guards treated me decently.”
It was not immediately clear where Mr Timmerman had been held, the Associated Press reported.
Earlier this year, authorities from the US state of Missouri said a man known as Pete Travis Timmerman, 29, had gone missing in Hungary in early June.
In late August, Hungarian police put out a missing persons announcement saying that Mr Timmerman was last seen at a church in Hungary’s capital, Budapest.
On a visit to Jordan, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the State Department was working to determine his identity and get him out of the country.
Mr Blinken also said the US was continuing to work to locate Mr Tice.
“No update on Austin Tice, except to say that every single day, we are working to find him and to bring him home, making sure that the word is out to everyone that this is a priority for the United States,” Mr Blinken said.
UN to pursue 4,000 Syrian human rights abusers
The United Nations (UN) has expressed hope the change in regime could help bring notorious human rights abusers in Syria to justice.
The UN’s Commission of Inquiry on Syria has been gathering evidence of crimes committed in Syria since the early days of the country’s brutal civil war in 2011, and has compiled lists of alleged perpetrators.
“Up to now, we have about 4,000 names on these lists,” the commissioner’s coordinator Linnea Arvidsson said.
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While some perpetrators had been convicted, Ms Arvidsson said many “higher-level” persons on the list had not.
“Now there is an opportunity opening up potentially for them also to be held accountable.”
She expressed optimism that the change of government in Syria would allow the UN to begin work, particularly now that many of the regime’s prisons had been opened up.
She pointed to footage from the notorious Seydnaya Prison in Damascus that showed detainees were held in “basement rooms, no windows, no light”.
“That’s exactly what we have been hearing for so many years from detainees,” Ms Arvidsson said.
“Some of them didn’t see the sunlight for years and years … they all describe it as darkness, profound darkness.”
New Syrian government to suspend constitution, parliament
Syria’s new government will suspend the country’s parliament and constitution for three months to support a transition, following the ousting of Assad.
A spokesperson for the new government, Obaida Arnaout, said the transition would include a review and possible amendments of Syria’s constitution.
“Our priority is to preserve and protect institutions,” he said.
Mr Arnaout also vowed the incoming government, led by recently installed Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir, would enforce “the rule of law”.
“All those who committed crimes against the Syrian people will be judged in accordance with the law,” he added.
Syrians across the country and around the world erupted in celebration after enduring an era during which suspected dissidents were jailed or killed, and nearly 14 years of war that killed 500,000 people and displaced millions.
AP/AFP/Reuters
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