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US man found wandering near Damascus after months in Syrian prison

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Travis Timmerman said he was arrested after entering the country on foot

US man found wandering near Damascus after months in Syrian prison

A US man, detained for months in a Syrian prison after entering the country on foot, has described being freed by hammer-wielding men as rebels overthrew the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

The man – who later identified himself as Travis Timmerman to the BBC’s US news partner CBS – was found by residents near the capital Damascus.

It comes as rebels say they intend to close Assad’s notoriously harsh prisons and track down those involved in torturing or killing detainees.

“We will pursue them in Syria, and we ask countries to hand over those who fled so we can achieve justice,” said rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, also known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani.

Footage posted on social media showed Mr Timmerman lying on a sofa as residents spoke to local reporters.

He said he had been arrested upon entering the country seven months ago.

The American was reported as missing in May, having last been seen in the Hungarian capital Budapest, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol and the Hungarian authorities.

On Monday, a day after rebels took control of Damascus and toppled Assad, Mr Timmerman said two men armed with a hammer broke open his prison door.

It was “busted down, it woke me up”, he said.

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“I thought the guards were still there, so I thought the warfare could have been more active than it ended up being… Once we got out, there was no resistance, there was no real fighting.”

The 30-year-old said he left prison with a large group of people and had been attempting to make his way to Jordan.

He said he “had a few moments of fear” when he left the prison, adding that he had since been more worried about finding somewhere to sleep.

However, local people had been receptive to his requests for food and assistance, he told reporters.

“They were coming to me, mostly,” Mr Timmerman said.

Syria’s new interim government “freed and secured” Mr Timmerman, it confirmed in a message on the Telegram messaging service on Thursday.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Washington was “working to bring [Mr Timmerman] home”.

Blinken, speaking during a visit to Jordan, added that he could not give any details about “exactly what’s going to happen”.

Thousands of prisoners have been released since the fall of Assad over the weekend.

Footage has shown men, women and in some cases children emerging from overcrowded windowless cells, often disorientated and unaware of events that had taken place outside.

However, Mr Timmerman appears to have been relatively well-treated, telling CBS: “I’m feeling well. I’ve been fed and I’ve been watered, so I’m feeling well.”

He added that he had had the use of a mobile phone during his detention and had spoken to his family three weeks ago.

Speaking to fellow US outlet NBC, Mr Timmerman said he had crossed the mountains between Lebanon and Syria on a “pilgrimage” and had “been reading the scripture a lot”.

He declined the opportunity to be put in touch with American officials.

Richard Timmerman, who identified himself as the freed prisoner’s great-uncle, said the last time he heard from him he had been working in Chicago.

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“The family had been looking for him, but no-one’s been able to find anything about him,” he was quoted as saying by the New York Times.

“He’s very responsible,” he added. “He’s not a criminal kind of person.”

On Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the US had asked Syria’s main rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) to help locate and free US journalist Austin Tice.

A freelance journalist, Mr Tice is thought to have been taken captive close to Damascus on 14 August 2012 while he was covering the country’s civil war.

He was last seen in a video, blindfolded and in apparent distress – posted online weeks after his capture. The US believes he was being held by the Assad regime.

President Joe Biden has said the US believes Mr Tice is alive, but they must pinpoint his location.

Syria’s new leadership said on Thursday the search for Mr Tice was “ongoing,” and that it was ready to “cooperate directly” with the US to find Americans that disappeared under the Assad regime.

The now collapsed regime was notorious for its extremely harsh prisons, where the UK-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates almost 60,000 people were tortured and killed.

Across Syria this week, families desperate to find loved ones have been streaming into these dark prison sites.

The Syrian Civil Defence Organisation, known as the White Helmets, has been helping the search – including in the infamous Saydnaya prison complex, described by human rights groups as the “human slaughterhouse”.

“We’re looking for secret prisons in several areas of Damascus,” Raed Saleh, director of The White Helmets told the BBC.

“We can’t say too much about this, but we’re looking.”

The White Helmets, known for pulling survivors from the rubble during Syria’s devastating civil war, say they helped recover thousands of detainees from the prisons.

But many families are still searching in vain.

“What took place in Saydnaya is very painful for the families who were waiting for their loved ones,” Saleh acknowledged.

“Our inability to reach anyone else in Saydnaya after the initial release of prisoners means that those people who were there are either dead or in another place.

“We have at least two teams looking for prisoners.

“One team with police sniffer dogs is looking for survivors. Another team is specialised in lock breaking and entering cells.”

US man found wandering near Damascus after months in Syrian prison

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Syria not threat to world, rebel leader al-Sharaa tells BBC

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3 days ago

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December 19, 2024

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Ahmed al-Sharaa

Syria not threat to world, rebel leader al-Sharaa tells BBC

The de facto leader of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has said the country is exhausted by war and is not a threat to its neighbours or to the West.

In an interview with the BBC in Damascus, he called for sanctions on Syria to be lifted.

“Now, after all that has happened, sanctions must be lifted because they were targeted at the old regime. The victim and the oppressor should not be treated in the same way,” he said.

Sharaa led the lightning offensive that toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime less than two weeks ago. He is the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the dominant group in the rebel alliance, and was previously known by his nom de guerre of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani.

He said HTS should be de-listed as a terrorist organisation. It is designated as one by the UN, US, EU and UK, among many others, as it started as a splinter group of al-Qaeda, which it broke away from in 2016.

Sharaa said HTS was not a terrorist group.

They did not target civilians or civilian areas, he said. In fact, they considered themselves to be victim of the crimes of the Assad regime.

He denied that he wanted to turn Syria into a version of Afghanistan.

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Sharaa said the countries were very different, with different traditions. Afghanistan was a tribal society. In Syria, he said, there was a different mindset.

He said he believed in education for women.

“We’ve had universities in Idlib for more than eight years,” Sharaa said, referring to Syria’s north-western province that has been held by rebels since 2011.

“I think the percentage of women in universities is more than 60%.”

And when asked whether the consumption of alcohol would be allowed, Sharaa said: “There are many things I just don’t have the right to talk about because they are legal issues.”

He added that there would be a “Syrian committee of legal experts to write a constitution. They will decide. And any ruler or president will have to follow the law”.

Sharaa was relaxed throughout the interview, wearing civilian clothes, and tried to offer reassurance to all those who believe his group has not broken with its extremist past.

Many Syrians do not believe him.

The actions of Syria’s new rulers in the next few months will indicate the kind of country they want Syria to be – and the way they want to rule it.

Syria not threat to world, rebel leader al-Sharaa tells BBC

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Israel hits ports, energy sites in Yemen after missile intercepted

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3 days ago

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December 19, 2024

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Israel hits ports, energy sites in Yemen after missile intercepted

JERUSALEM: Israel said Thursday it struck ports and energy infrastructure it alleges are used by Houthi militants, after intercepting a missile fired by the group.

Israel’s military said it “conducted precise strikes on Houthi military targets in Yemen — including ports and energy infrastructure in Sanaa, which the Houthis have been using in ways that effectively contributed to their military actions.”

The announcement came shortly after Israel said it had intercepted a missile fired from Yemen.

Al-Masira, a media channel belonging to the Houthis, said a series of “aggressive raids” were launched in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa and the port city of Hodeidah.

It reported raids that “targeted two central power plants” in Yemen’s capital Sanaa, while in Hodeidah it said “the enemy launched four aggressive raids targeting the port… and two raids targeting” an oil facility.

The strikes were the second time this week that Israel’s military has intercepted a missile from Yemen.

On Monday, the Houthis claimed a missile launch they said was aimed at “a military target of the Israeli enemy in the occupied area of Yaffa” — a reference to Israel’s Tel Aviv area.

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Also Monday, an Israeli navy missile boat intercepted a drone in the Mediterranean after it was launched from Yemen, the military said.

The Houthi militants have said they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians and pledged Monday to continue operations “until the aggression on Gaza stops and the siege is lifted.”

On December 9, a drone claimed by Houthis exploded on the top floor of a residential building in the central Israel city of Yavne, causing no casualties.

In July, a Houthi drone attack in Tel Aviv killed an Israeli civilian, prompting retaliatory strikes on the Yemeni port of Hodeidah.

The Houthis have also regularly targeted shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, leading to retaliatory strikes on Houthi targets by United States and sometimes British forces.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said the group had become a “global threat,” pointing to Iran’s support for the militants.

“We will continue to act against anyone, anyone in the Middle East, that threatens the state of Israel,” he said.

 

Israel hits ports, energy sites in Yemen after missile intercepted

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Gaza mediators intensify ceasefire efforts, Israeli strikes kill 20 people

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3 days ago

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December 19, 2024

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A Palestinian boy looks as others inspect the damage at a tent camp sheltering displaced people, following an Israeli strike, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Al-Mawasi area, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, December 18, 2024. (Reuters)

Gaza mediators intensify ceasefire efforts, Israeli strikes kill 20 people

CAIRO: The United States, joined by Arab mediators, sought on Wednesday to conclude an agreement between Israel and Hamas to halt the 14-month-old war in the Gaza Strip where medics said Israeli strikes killed at least 20 Palestinians overnight.

A Palestinian official close to the negotiations said on Wednesday that mediators had narrowed gaps on most of the agreement’s clauses. He said Israel had introduced conditions which Hamas rejected but would not elaborate.

On Tuesday, sources close to the talks in Cairo, the Egyptian capital, said an agreement could be signed in coming days on a ceasefire and a release of hostages held in Gaza in return for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Medics said an Israeli airstrike killed at least 10 people in a house in the northern town of Beit Lahiya while six were killed in separate airstrikes in Gaza City, Nuseirat camp in central areas, and Rafah near the border with Egypt.

In Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, medics said four people were killed in an airstrike on a house. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military spokesman.

Israeli forces have operated in the towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya as well as the nearby Jabalia camp since October, in a campaign the military said aimed to prevent Hamas militants from regrouping.

Palestinians accuse Israel of carrying out acts of “ethnic cleansing” to depopulate the northern edge of the enclave to create a buffer zone. Israel denies it.

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Hamas does not disclose its casualties, and the Palestinian health ministry does not distinguish in its daily death toll between combatants and non-combatants.

On Wednesday, the Israeli military said it struck a number of Hamas militants planning an imminent attack against Israeli forces operating in Jabalia.

Later on Wednesday, Muhammad Saleh, director of Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia, said Israeli shelling in the vicinity damaged the facility, wounding seven medics and one patient inside the hospital.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment.

In the Central Gaza camp of Bureij, Palestinian families began leaving some districts after the army posted new evacuation orders on X and in written and audio messages to mobile phones of some of the population there, citing new firing of rockets by Palestinian militants from the area.

CEASEFIRE GAINS MOMENTUM

The US administration, joined by mediators from Egypt and Qatar, has made intensive efforts in recent days to advance the talks before President Joe Biden leaves office next month.

In Jerusalem, Israeli President Isaac Herzog met Adam Boehler, US President-elect Donald Trump’s designated envoy for hostage affairs. Trump has threatened that “all hell is going to break out” if Hamas does not release its hostages by Jan. 20, the day Trump returns to the White House.

CIA Director William Burns was due in Doha on Wednesday for talks with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani on bridging remaining gaps between Israel and Hamas, other knowledgeable sources said. The CIA declined to comment.

Israeli negotiators were in Doha on Monday looking to bridge gaps between Israel and Hamas on a deal Biden outlined in May.

There have been repeated rounds of talks over the past year, all of which have failed, with Israel insisting on retaining a military presence in Gaza and Hamas refusing to release hostages until the troops pulled out.

The war in Gaza, triggered by a Hamas-led attack on communities in southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people and saw more than 250 abducted as hostages, has sent shockwaves across the Middle East and left Israel isolated internationally.

Israel’s campaign has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, displaced most of the 2.3 million population and reduced much of the coastal enclave to ruins.

 

Gaza mediators intensify ceasefire efforts, Israeli strikes kill 20 people

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