A US man, detained for months in a Syrian jail after getting into the nation on foot, has described being freed by hammer-wielding males as rebels overthrew the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
The person – who later recognized himself as Travis Timmerman to the BBC’s US information accomplice CBS – was discovered by residents close to the capital Damascus.
Footage posted on social media confirmed him mendacity on a settee as residents spoke to native reporters.
Mr Timmerman mentioned he had been arrested upon getting into the nation seven months in the past.
He had gone lacking within the Hungarian capital Budapest in Might, in line with the Missouri State Freeway Patrol.
On Monday, a day after rebels took management of Damascus and toppled Assad, Mr Timmerman mentioned two males armed with a hammer broke his jail door down.
It was “busted down, it woke me up”, he mentioned.
“I believed the guards had been nonetheless there, so I believed the warfare might have been extra energetic than it ended up being… As soon as we obtained out, there was no resistance, there was no actual preventing.”
The 30-year-old mentioned he left jail with a big group of individuals and had been making an attempt to make his option to Jordan.
He mentioned he “had a number of moments of worry” when he left the jail, including that he had since been extra fearful about discovering someplace to sleep.
Nonetheless native folks had been receptive to his requests for meals and help, he instructed reporters.
“They had been coming to me, largely,” Mr Timmerman mentioned
Hundreds of prisoners have been launched because the fall of Assad over the weekend.
Footage has proven males, girl and in some circumstances youngsters rising from overcrowded windowless cells, typically disorientated and unaware of occasions that had taken place outdoors.
The Assad regime was infamous for its extraordinarily harsh prisons, with the UK-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimating that just about 60,000 folks had been tortured and killed within the prisons run by the deposed president.
Nonetheless, Mr Timmerman seems to have been comparatively well-treated, telling CBS: “I am feeling properly. I have been fed and I have been watered, so I am feeling properly.”
He added that he had had using a cell phone throughout his detention and had spoken to his household three weeks in the past.
The victorious insurgent forces have mentioned they plan to shut Assad’s prisons and hunt these concerned within the killing or torture of detainees.
“We are going to pursue them in Syria, and we ask international locations handy over those that fled so we are able to obtain justice,” mentioned insurgent chief Ahmed al-Sharaa, often known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani.
