UPDATED: CNN‘s Clarissa Ward mentioned {that a} man recognized in her report as a prisoner underneath the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad, the deposed dictator, was the truth is an intelligence officer.
“We can affirm the true identification of the person from our story final Wednesday as Salama Mohammed Salama,” Ward wrote on X.
Last week, Ward and her group visited a jail constructing on the Syrian air drive intelligence headquarters in Damascus as they looked for lacking American journalist Austin Tice. The go to to the jail was unannounced, in response to the community.
When they entered the ability, they have been adopted by a guard, a Syrian insurgent. As they appeared round, they seen {that a} cell was locked from the surface, and requested the guard about whether or not there was anybody there. The guard shot the lock off the door, and the CNN crew adopted him inside.
The report confirmed a person contained in the cell, hiding underneath a blanket. He requested for water, which the CNN group supplied to him. The man instructed them his identify was Adel Ghurbal and that he was from Homs. He mentioned that he had been arrested three months in the past and had been in three completely different jails, and the report detailed how he was unaware of the overthrow of Assad. The humanitarian group Red Crescent arrived quickly after and took the person away, and posted in a while social media that he had been dropped off at a relative’s home.
The report drew widespread consideration as a dramatic second after the autumn of the Assad regime.
But on Sunday, the positioning Verify-Sy raised questions concerning the report, suggesting that he was the truth is Salama Mohammad Salama, also called Abu Hamza, a primary lieutenant in Syrian Air Force Intelligence. “According to locals, his latest incarceration—lasting lower than a month—was because of a dispute over profit-sharing from extorted funds with a higher-ranking officer,” Verify-Sy reported. “This led to his detention in one in all Damascus’s cells, as per neighborhood sources.” The website included photographs from the CNN report and Salameh in navy uniform.
CNN mentioned as we speak that it obtained a photograph that confirmed the person’s actual identification. The community reported that native residents of Homs recognized the person as Salama, and that “he was recognized for operating the Air Force Intelligence Directorate’s checkpoints within the metropolis and accused him of getting a repute for extortion and harassment.”
A CNN spokesperson mentioned earlier as we speak, “No one apart from the CNN group was conscious of our plans to go to the jail constructing featured in our report that day. The occasions transpired as they seem in our movie. The determination to launch the prisoner featured in our report was taken by the guard – a Syrian insurgent. We reported the scene because it unfolded, together with what the prisoner instructed us, with clear attribution.”
CNN connected a observe to on-line variations of its report, notifying viewers that it was investigating.
