How American man landed in Syrian jail and how he was freed

A US man who went missing seven months ago has been found in Syria, where he says he was imprisoned for months after entering the country on foot as a pilgrim.

Travis Timmerman said on Friday that he was released by the “liberators” who arrived in Damascus on December 9, a day after the long-time ruler, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, fled the capital.

Here’s all we know about him.

The missing American man

Timmerman, 29, went missing in June after he had gone to Syria on a Christian pilgrimage. He said he was detained after he crossed into Syria from a mountain along the eastern Lebanese town of Zahle.

According to his family, he was visiting Prague and Budapest, Hungary, to “write about different churches,” and had said in May that he was going somewhere without internet. His family reported him missing after he stopped replying to calls and texts.

Timmerman hails from Urbana, Missouri, about 80 kilometres north of Springfield. He earned a finance degree from Missouri State University in 2017. He worked for the law firm, Goldberg Law Group, based in Chicago, Illinois, for over a year between 2020 and 2021, as per CNN.

More from Explainers

What the Zuck? Why Mark Zuckerberg’s neighbours are angry with him In Graphics | How Indians used UPI in July

The Missouri State Highway Patrol issued a bulletin saying “Pete Timmerman” had gone missing in Hungary in early June. In late August, Hungarian police put out an announcement, saying the American man was last seen at a church in Budapest.

His release

Timmerman was kept in the Palestine Branch, a notorious detention facility operated by Syrian intelligence.

According to The Associated Press, he was questioned for 3.5 hours by on the suspicions of being a spy. In a brief second interview, they searched his mobile phone, and in the last interview he started discussing his dreams with his captors.

He said he was freed by “the liberators who came into the prison and knocked the door down (of his cell) with a hammer.”

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

Editor’s Picks

1

Poor morale, reliance on foreign allies: The collapse of Assad’s army in Syria explained 2

How long will it take to rebuild Syria destroyed by the Assad regime?

Timmerman described those who released him as speaking to him in Arabic. “It was an excited scene. It was not clear if the guards who were there were still there. I didn’t know if they were taking us out in the midst of a war zone… in hindsight, this shooting was not actual clashes.”

He was among the thousands of people released from Syria’s sprawling military prisons this week after rebels reached Damascus, overthrowing Assad and ending his family’s 54-year rule.

He spent two nights in Damascus — one in an abandoned apartment in the old town and another at a new friend’s house — before walking toward Jordan, when a Syrian family found him barefoot on a main road early Thursday. At first, they mistook him for US journalist Austin Tice, who has been missing for more than a decade now.

The Syrian family told AP that Timmerman appeared cold and hungry so they brought him back to their home. “I fed him and called a doctor,” said Mosaed al-Rifai, the 68-year-old waste collector, and a few hours later, rebels picked him up.

Mouaz Mostafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a US-based nonprofit group who was in Damascus, reached him and contacted US authorities about him. Timmerman is now recovering until the rebels can figure out how to hand him to US authorities, he said.

Timmerman calls his release a “blessing."

His mother, Stacey Collins Gardiner, told NPR, “That’s what my daughter said, it’s a Christmas miracle.”

The political affairs office of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group that led the lightning offensive to topple the government, “We affirm our readiness to cooperate directly with the US administration to complete the search for American citizens disappeared by the former Assad regime.”

An official with the group later said it was arranging for Timmerman to leave Syria.

From Aqaba, Jordan, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that the White House was “working to bring him home, to bring him out of Syria” without sharing any further details.

His time in prison

Timmerman had been held separately from Syrian and other Arab prisoners in the detention facility.

He said he didn’t know of any other Americans held in the facility.

“I was there seven months. There were women there up above me,” Timmerman said. He heard the women singing and teaching their children.

“I was never beaten,” he said, adding that their threat of using violence against him was “implicit” because he could hear daily beatings next door.

During his time in prison, he also heard explosions, especially when Israel intensified its strikes in Syria.

The captors allowed him to use his mobile to speak with his family three weeks ago. At the time, Timmerman didn’t inform his family he was in Damascus, only that he was fine.

In the prison, he had a mattress, a plastic drinking container and two others for waste. He was allowed to take three bathroom breaks and exercise breaks in the first half of his stay. He used Friday prayers to keep track of days.

Timmerman also says he initially gained weight because he ate unleavened bread, rice and oats. Sometimes he would get a potato or a tomato — a treatment clearly reserved for non-Syrian prisoners, who often ended up emaciated or sick.

“It is a time of solace and you can meditate on your life,” he told AP, adding, “It was good for me.”

He said he planned to return to Damascus.

American journalist missing in Syria

According to State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller on Tuesday, the US has sought assistance from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Syria’s main rebel group, in locating and releasing American journalist Austin Tice.

Tice, a freelance journalist, is believed to have been captured on August 14, 2012, in Damascus, while covering the civil war in the country.

Weeks after his capture, a video of him wearing a blindfold and appearing distressed was uploaded online. The US believes the Assad government was holding him captive.

According to President Joe Biden, the US believes Tice is still alive but needs to identify where he is.

The search for Tice is “ongoing,” according to Syria’s new leadership, which also stated on Thursday that it is prepared to “cooperate directly” with America in order to locate Americans who disappeared during the Assad regime.

With inputs from agencies