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An American who spent seven months in a Syrian prison after crossing into the country on foot on a Christian pilgrimage has been found.
Travis Timmerman, who was found in the town of Dhiyabiya, says he was one of thousands of people released from Syrian prisons after rebel groups ousted the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad last weekend.
Speaking with CBS, Mr Timmerman revealed that he was freed by two men with AK-47s on Monday, after being detained when he entered Syria for “spiritual purposes”. He told Al Arabiya TV network that he crossed into Syria on foot from the eastern Lebanese town of Zahlé.
After being detained and spending seven months in prison, Timmerman’s “door was busted down”, he told CBS. “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.”
Mr Timmerman was at first mistaken by many to be Austin Tice, the American journalist who went missing in Syria 12 years ago and who the US government believes is still alive.
A video circulated online showed Mr Timmerman lying on a mattress under a blanket, with a group of men in the video saying he was being treated well and would be returned home safely. In the video, Mr Timmerman appears relaxed in what looks to be a private home.
Mr Timmerman said his experience of prison “wasn’t too bad”. He told Al Arabiya that he was fed and given water, but “the one difficulty was that I couldn’t go to the bathroom when I wanted to”. He said he was only permitted to go to the bathroom three times a day.
“I was not beaten and the guards treated me decently,” he said.
However, he said he could hear other young men being tortured.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is currently in Aqaba, Jordan, has not immediately commented on the discovery.
Roger Carstens, the top hostage negotiator for the US government, travelled to Lebanon earlier this week hoping to collect information on the whereabouts of Austin Tice, who remains missing.
President Joe Biden said on Sunday his administration believed Mr Tice is still alive. The government believes they can get him back, he told reporters in the White House, while admitting they have “no direct evidence” that he is OK.
Mr Tice disappeared at a checkpoint in a contested area west of Damascus in August 2012 after the Syrian war broke out a year earlier. He worked freelance and had his work published in The Washington Post, McClatchy newspapers and others.
In footage released weeks after he went missing, Mr Tice was shown blindfolded and held by armed men, but he has not been heard from since.
