The US military has transported out of Syria an American who went missing seven months ago in former President Bashar Assad’s notorious prison system and was one of thousands released this week by rebels, US officials said Friday.
Travis Timmerman, 29, was flown to Jordan by a US military helicopter, according to two US officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a current operation.
It is unclear where Timmerman will go next. He thanked his rescuers for his release, but he has told American officials that he wants to stay in the region, according to another person familiar with the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Timmerman was detained in June after crossing into Syria on a Christian pilgrimage from a mountain near Zahle in eastern Lebanon.
In an interview with The Associated Press earlier Friday, he claimed that he was not mistreated while in Palestine Branch, a notorious detention facility run by Syrian intelligence.
Timmerman stated that in his prison cell, he had a mattress, a plastic drinking container, and two waste containers. He said the Friday prayer calls helped him keep track of the days.
Timmerman said he was released Monday morning, along with a young Syrian man and 70 female prisoners, some of whom had children with them, after rebels took control of Damascus and deposed Assad in a dramatic upheaval.
He claimed that he had been set free by “the liberators who came into the prison and knocked the door down (of his cell) with a hammer.” He was held separately from Syrian and other Arab prisoners and stated that he was unaware of any other Americans detained in the facility.
Timmerman is from Urbana, Missouri, which is approximately 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Springfield in the state’s southwestern region. He received a finance degree from Missouri State University in 2017.
His mother, Stacey Gardiner, said she was informed that he was being transported to a military base in Jordan. The family still had not spoken to him.
Mouaz Moustafa, a Syrian opposition activist based in the United States who worked with rebels to arrange Timmerman’s return to safety, tweeted a photo of the freed American standing next to a man dressed in a US military uniform in the region’s flat desert.
“Safe and sound, and back in American hands,” Moustafa stated.
Meanwhile, US officials are searching for Austin Tice, an American journalist who went missing near Damascus 12 years ago.
Nizar Zakka, president of Hostage Aid Worldwide, the US-based organization tasked by Tice’s family with finding him, said he called Tice’s mother and sister after receiving a tip Thursday from a Syrian near where Timmerman was discovered. The caller believed the foreigner was Tice.
“We asked them for videos, we ask them for voice (recordings) to make sure,” Zakka told me. “We had the impression from the start, particularly given the age, that it was not correct. But we sent it to the mother. It was 3 a.m. (in the United States), and we woke the sister, who told me one thing. She said, “It is definitely not Austin.”
In his search for Tice, Zakka stated that he had visited detention facilities and the homes of prominent figures in Assad’s circle, but that the search had yielded no results.
Zakka described three possible scenarios: “we will find him somewhere in Damascus, in the jail that he was left in or in the house, in the safe house where he is”; that a high-ranking member of Assad’s circle took Tice along while fleeing the country “as a security for his life”; or that Tice’s captors killed him and other prisoners to erase evidence of their crimes.
He criticized the United States for announcing a $10 million reward for information leading to Tice, claiming that it resulted in a flood of false tips and confusion.