A scruffy, bearded man who said he was missing Missouri resident Travis Timmerman was found in Syria on Thursday — and he said he was imprisoned after traveling to the country “for spiritual purposes.”
Timerman, 29, said he had spent more than half a year in government prison when rebel fighters armed with AK-47s freed him on Monday following the fall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
“I woke up to my door breaking,” Timmerman told CBS.
“I thought the guards were still there, so I thought the battle might have been more active than it ended up being…Once we got out, there was no resistance, no real fighting.”
Timerman’s video, posted Thursday by Turkish news agency Anadolu, initially sparked speculation that he might be American journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared while covering the anti-Assad uprising in Damascus at the start of the Syrian civil war in 2012 .
Timerman said he was detained seven months ago after crossing the border from Lebanon and entering Syria without permission.
He had traveled from Europe to Lebanon for “spiritual purposes” – and described himself to NBC News as a religious “pilgrim”.
His experience in one of Syria’s notorious prisons “wasn’t too bad”, he said.
“I was never beaten. The only bad thing was that I couldn’t go to the bathroom when I wanted to. I was only allowed out three times a day to go to the bathroom,” he told CBS News.
He said they are now having more difficulty finding a place to sleep at night on the streets.
(tags to translate)US news(T)world news(T)civil war(T)prisons(T)Syria(T)war
