CNN: Freed prisoner who said he was a victim of the Assad regime was an intelligence officer, locals say

[Dennis Donovan]

CNN - (archived: https://archive.ph/BHhBV ) Freed prisoner who said he was a victim of the Assad regime was an intelligence officer, locals say

By Tim Lister and Eyad Kourdi, CNN

Updated 5:38 PM EST, Mon December 16, 2024



(CNN) — A man who was filmed by CNN being released by rebels from a Damascus jail was a former intelligence officer with the deposed Syrian regime, according to local residents, and not an ordinary citizen who had been imprisoned, as he had claimed.

CNN initially found the man while pursuing leads on the missing US journalist Austin Tice. In a video report, chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward and her team, accompanied by a rebel guard, came across a cell in a Damascus jail that was padlocked from the outside. The guard blew off the lock with a gun, and the man was found alone inside the cell, under a blanket.

When he emerged into the open air, the man appeared bewildered. Questioned by the rebel fighter who freed him, the man identified himself as Adel Ghurbal from the central Syrian city of Homs.

He claimed that he had been kept in a cell for three months, adding that it was the third prison where he had been confined. The man also said he was not aware that the Assad regime had fallen. He was being held in a jail that had been run by the Syrian air force’s intelligence services until the Assad regime collapsed.

An image obtained by CNN on Monday now points to the man’s real identity – said to be a lieutenant in the Assad regime’s Air Force Intelligence Directorate, Salama Mohammad Salama.



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[UpInArms]

1. I am sure he is happy to be released back to his family

I am not so sure this was a good thing.