An American freed in Syria on Thursday said he was on a Christian pilgrimage when he crossed into the country on foot seven months ago and was detained by the Bashar al-Assad regime.
Travis Timmerman was first seen in video that emerged online Thursday after rebels seized the capital Damascus and overthrew Assad over the weekend.
In the video, a bearded Timmerman was lying on a mattress under a blanket in what appeared to be a private house. A group of men in the video said he was being treated well and would be safely returned home, The Associated Press reported.
Some who viewed the video initially believed Timmerman was Austin Tice, an American journalist and Marine veteran who disappeared in Syria 12 years ago. Tice remains missing as of Thursday morning, though U.S. officials have said they believe he is still alive.
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Timmerman later told the Al-Arabiya TV network during an interview that he was detained after illegally crossing into Syria on foot from the eastern Lebanese town of Zahle seven months ago.
He said the guards treated him well in detention but could hear others, who he believed were young men, being tortured daily.
“It was OK. I was fed. I was watered. The one difficulty was that I couldn’t go to the bathroom when I wanted to,” he said, noting that guards only let him out three times a day.
Thousands of people were freed from the Saydnaya military prison, just north of Damascus, Syria, after rebels overthrew the Bashar al-Assad regime on Sunday. The infamous prison is known as the “human slaughterhouse.” (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
“I was not beaten and the guards treated me decently,” he added.
U.S. officials did not immediately comment on Timmerman.
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Meanwhile, the Biden administration sent the U.S. government’s top hostage negotiator, Roger Carstens, to Lebanon earlier this week in hopes of collecting information on the whereabouts of Tice.
The State Department’s Reward for Justice program is offering $10 million for information relating to locating Austin Tice. (The State Department’s Reward for Justice)
Tice was detained in Damascus in August 2012 while reporting on the uprising against the Assad regime, which marked the early stages of the Syrian civil war.
Tice was last seen in video that emerged weeks after his disappearance, showing him blindfolded and held by armed men and saying, “Oh, Jesus.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.