CNN
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A person who was filmed by CNN being launched by rebels from a Damascus jail was a former intelligence officer with the deposed Syrian regime, in accordance with native residents, and never an strange citizen who had been imprisoned, as he had claimed.
CNN initially discovered the person whereas pursuing leads on the lacking US journalist Austin Tice. In a video report, chief worldwide correspondent Clarissa Ward and her staff, accompanied by a insurgent guard, got here throughout a cell in a Damascus jail that was padlocked from the skin. The guard blew off the lock with a gun, and the person was discovered alone contained in the cell, beneath a blanket.
When he emerged into the open air, the person appeared bewildered. Questioned by the insurgent fighter who freed him, the person recognized himself as Adel Ghurbal from the central Syrian metropolis of Homs.
He claimed that he had been stored in a cell for 3 months, including that it was the third jail the place he had been confined. The man additionally mentioned he was not conscious that the Assad regime had fallen. He was being held in a jail that had been run by the Syrian air drive’s intelligence providers till the Assad regime collapsed.
An picture obtained by CNN on Monday now factors to the person’s actual identification – mentioned to be a lieutenant within the Assad regime’s Air Force Intelligence Directorate, Salama Mohammad Salama.
A resident of the Bayada neighborhood in Homs gave CNN {a photograph} mentioned to be of the identical man whereas he was on obligation, in what seems to be a authorities workplace. Facial recognition software program supplied a match of greater than 99 p.c with the person CNN met within the Damascus jail cell. The {photograph} reveals him sitting at a desk, apparently in navy clothes. CNN is just not publishing the picture to guard the supply’s anonymity.
As CNN continued to pursue details about the freed prisoner after the unique report, a number of residents of Homs mentioned that the person was Salama, also referred to as Abu Hamza. They advised CNN that he was identified for operating the Air Force Intelligence Directorate’s checkpoints within the metropolis and accused him of getting a fame for extortion and harassment.
It’s unclear how or why Salama ended up within the Damascus jail, and CNN has not been in a position to reestablish contact with him. Over the weekend, Verify-Sy, which says it’s a Syrian fact-checking web site, was the primary to establish the person as Salama. It mentioned that he had been jailed for lower than a month due to a dispute over “profit-sharing from extorted funds with a higher-ranking officer.” CNN can’t independently confirm this declare.
Rebel guards handed him over to the Syrian Red Crescent. The medical reduction group later posted an image of him on social media, saying they’d returned a freed prisoner to kinfolk in Damascus.
Salama’s present whereabouts are unknown.
