Released prisoner: Assad regime victim or secret service agent?

Released prisoner: Assad regime victim or secret service agent?

A man filmed by CNN being freed from a Damascus prison by rebels was not an ordinary citizen as he initially claimed. According to local residents, he was a former intelligence officer of the deposed Syrian regime.

The discovery of the man

CNN found the man while researching missing US journalist Austin Tice. In a video, Chief International Affairs Correspondent Clarissa Ward and her team reported that they came across a cell in a Damascus prison that was locked from the outside. One of the rebels opened the lock with a gun, and the man was found alone in the cell under a blanket.

The liberation process and its identity

When he stepped out into the fresh air, the man appeared confused. When questioned by the rebel who rescued him, he said he was Adel Ghurbal from the central Syrian city of Homs. He claimed that he had been held in a cell for three months, adding that this was the third detention center he had been held in. He was unaware that the Assad regime had fallen. The man was held in a prison previously run by the Syrian Air Force's intelligence services.

New insights into Salama Mohammad Salama

An image obtained by CNN on Monday suggests that the man is actually Salama Mohammad Salama, a lieutenant in the Assad regime's air force intelligence unit. A resident of the Bayada district of Homs provided CNN with a photo showing the man while on duty in a government office. Facial recognition software was used to create a more than 99 percent match with the man CNN met in the Damascus cell. The photo shows him at his desk, apparently in military uniform. CNN is not publishing the image to protect the source's anonymity.

Allegations and ambiguities about his detention

As CNN gathered more information about the freed prisoner, several Homs residents said the man was Salama, also known as Abu Hamza. They told CNN that he was known for running the Air Force intelligence unit's checkpoints in the city and had a reputation for extortion and harassment. It is unclear how or why Salama ended up in Damascus prison, and CNN has not been able to re-establish contact with him. Over the weekend, the Syrian fact-checking website Verify-Sy first identified the man as Salama. They reported that he had been imprisoned for less than a month over a dispute over “sharing of profits from extorted funds with a senior officer.” CNN cannot independently verify this claim.

The handover to the Red Cross and the uncertain future

The rebel Guardians handed him over to the Syrian Red Crescent. The medical charity later posted a picture of him on social media and said they had returned a freed prisoner to relatives in Damascus. Salama's whereabouts are currently unknown.