Man found locked in Syrian prison cell

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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