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Travis Timmerman told the Al-Arabiya TV network in an interview
on Thursday that he had been treated well. He said he had
crossed into Syria from Lebanon on a Christian pilgrimage.
He appeared in videos circulating online earlier in the day in
which rebels said they had located him and were keeping him
safe. Some people who saw the videos initially mistook him for
Austin Tice, an American journalist who went missing in Syria 12
years ago.
The rebels who overthrew Syrian President Bashar Assad over the
weekend have released people held in prisons across the country.
There was no immediate comment from U.S. officials traveling
with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Aqaba, Jordan.
Timmerman told Al-Arabiya that he spent a month in the eastern
Lebanese city of Zahle, from where he crossed into Syria
illegally.
He said he had heard other young men being tortured while he was
detained but that he himself had not been mistreated.
“It was OK. I was fed. I was watered. The one difficulty was
that I couldn’t go to the bathroom when I wanted to,” he said.
He said he was only allowed to go to the bathroom three times a
day.
“I was not beaten and the guards treated me decently,” he said.
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