American pilgrim imprisoned in Assad's Syria calls his release from prison a 'blessing'

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — An American who disappeared seven months ago into former Syrian President Bashar Assad’s notorious prison system said early Friday he was released by the “liberators” who arrived in Damascus a day after the longtime ruler fled the capital.

Travis Timmerman called his release a “blessing” when he spoke to The Associated Press from a hotel room in Damascus, where he arrived late Thursday. 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.

Timmerman, 29, said he had gone to Syria on a Christian pilgrimage and was not ill-treated while in Palestine Branch, a notorious detention facility operated by Syrian intelligence. He said he was freed by “the liberators who came into the prison and knocked the door down (of his cell) with a hammer.”

The political affairs office of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group that led the lightning offensive to topple Assad’s government, said the group had secured his release.

“We affirm our readiness to cooperate directly with the U.S. administration to complete the search for American citizens disappeared by the former Assad regime,” the group said, adding that a search was underway for Austin Tice, an American journalist who went missing in Syria 12 years ago. An official with the group later said it was arranging for Timmerman to leave Syria, but gave no details.

Timmerman said he was released Monday morning alongside a young Syrian man and 70 female prisoners, some of whom had their children with them.

He had been held separately from Syrian and other Arab prisoners and 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 and could hear some of the men being beaten regularly. “I was never beaten,” he said.

He was detained after he crossed into Syria from a mountain along the eastern Lebanese town of Zahle in June. He was questioned for three and half hours by interrogators who thought he must be 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 their threat of using violence against him was “implicit” because he could hear daily beatings next door. But his captors let him use his mobile to call his family three weeks ago. At the time, Timmerman didn’t tell his family he was in Damascus, only that he was fine.

He said later in his detention, he could hear explosions — at a time when Israel was intensifying its strikes in Syria. Israel’s war with the Hezbollah militant group had intensified in September, before a ceasefire was reached last month.

“I heard some explosives that shook the building,” he said.

In his prison cell, Timmerman said he had a mattress, a plastic drinking container and two others for waste. He had three bathroom breaks and had exercise breaks in the first half of his stay.

He said the Friday calls to prayers helped keep track of days.

He said he gained weight at first 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. “It was good for me.”

Timmerman was disheveled, with a scraggly beard and long hair and nails. He said he had a good sleep and a meal on Thursday.

He said he planned to return to Damascus.

Timmerman is from Urbana, Missouri, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Springfield in the southwestern part of the state. He earned a finance degree from Missouri State University in 2017.

Timmerman’s mother, Stacey Gardiner, told the AP that as of Thursday evening, she hadn’t spoken to her son. She said he told her he was visiting Prague and Budapest, Hungary, to “write about different churches.” She said she last heard from him in May, when he said he was going somewhere without internet and that he would call when he had access again. Then he stopped replying to calls and texts and she didn't know whether he was alive or dead.

“I couldn’t help him, and that broke my heart more and more each day,” Gardiner said. “I just want my baby (to) come home.”

The family reported him missing, and 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 a missing persons announcement for “Travis Pete Timmerman,” saying he was last seen at a church in Budapest. Timmerman goes by Travis.

In describing his release from prison, Timmerman said the action outside his cell woke him up. Those who came to release him spoke to him in Arabic. “It was an excited scene. It was not clear if the guards who were there were still there,” Timmerman said. “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 said he was panicked for a moment. But he realized some of the gunfire was celebratory from blanks. One man was shooting from an AK-47. At one point, he went running back into the prison with two other prisoners. A fellow prisoner helped him out, holding his arm, and speaking Arabic to those around. They both accompanied a female prisoner to her home.

He spent two nights in Damascus, one in abandoned apartment in the old town and another at a new friend’s house.

He then started walking toward Jordan, when a Syrian family found him barefoot on a main road in the countryside of Damascus early Thursday.

At first some mistook him for Tice.

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 who first found Timmerman.

A few hours after al-Rifai discovered him, rebels arrived at the family’s house to pick him up, he said.

Mouaz Mostafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a U.S.-based nonprofit group, who was in Damascus learned of Timmerman’s location, reached him and contacted US authorities about him.

Timmerman is now recovering until the rebels can figure out how to hand him to U.S. authorities, Moustafa said.

From Aqaba, Jordan, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that the White House was “working to bring him home, to bring him out of Syria” but declined further comment for privacy reasons.

Washington’s top hostage negotiator, Roger Carstens, travelled to Lebanon this week in hopes of collecting information on the whereabouts of Tice.

President Joe Biden has said his administration believed Tice was alive and was committed to bringing him home, though he also acknowledged on Sunday that “we have no direct evidence” of his status. The case has frustrated U.S. intelligence officials for years.

“This is a priority for the United States,” Blinken said.

Tice, who has had his work published by The Washington Post, McClatchy newspapers and others, disappeared at a checkpoint in a contested area west of Damascus in August 2012 as the Syrian civil war intensified.

A video released weeks after Tice went missing showed him blindfolded and held by armed men. He hasn’t been heard from since. Assad’s government had denied that it was holding him.

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Ingram reported from Urbana, Missouri. Associated Press writers Jim Salter in O’Fallon, Missouri; Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas; and Summer Ballentine in Jefferson City, Missouri, contributed to this report.

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