Man found locked in Syrian prison cell
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The man filmed by CNN being freed by rebels from a Damascus prison was a former Syrian regime intelligence agent who had been ousted, local residents say, and not an ordinary civilian prisoner, as he had claimed.
CNN first found the man while tracking missing American journalist Austin Tice. In a video report, chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward and her team, accompanied by a rebel guard, came across a cell in a Damascus prison that was locked from the outside. The guard broke the lock with a gun and the man was found alone inside the cell, under a blanket.
When he stepped outside, the man appeared distressed. When questioned by the rebel fighter who freed him, the man identified himself as Adel Ghurbal, from the city of Homs in central Syria.
He said he had been held in the cell for three months, adding that it was the third prison he had been held in. The man also said he was unaware of the fall of the Assad regime. He was held in a prison run by Syrian Air Force Intelligence until the fall of the Assad regime.
An image obtained by CNN on Monday now shows the man's true identity - believed to be a lieutenant in the Assad regime's air force intelligence directorate, Salama Mohammad Salama. CNN
The man reacts after CNN crews entered the cell. A resident of the Bayada neighborhood of Homs provided CNN with a photo believed to be of the same man while on duty at what appears to be a government office. Facial recognition software provided a more than 99 percent match to the man CNN met in a Damascus prison cell. The photo shows him sitting at a table, apparently in military uniform. CNN is not publishing the photo to protect the source's anonymity. As CNN continued to seek information about the freed prisoner after the first report was published, some Homs residents said the man was Salama, also known as Abu Hamza. They told CNN he was known for running Air Force Intelligence Directorate checkpoints in the city and accused him of having a reputation for extortion and harassment.
It is unclear how and why Salama ended up in a Damascus prison, and CNN was unable to re-establish contact with him. Over the weekend, Verify-Sy, which claims to be a Syrian fact-checking site, was the first to identify the man as Salama. He said he was jailed for less than a month for a dispute over "sharing the profits of extorted funds with a senior official." CNN cannot independently verify this statement. Rebel Guards surrender to the Syrian Red Crescent. The medical aid organization later posted a photo of him on social media, saying he had returned a released prisoner to his relatives in Damascus.
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Salama's current whereabouts are unknown.
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