Syria’s Damascus After entering Syria on a “pilgrimage” to Damascus, a Missouri man who was discovered there told NBC News on Thursday that he was imprisoned there for months. The fact that the man, who claimed to be Travis Timmerman and vanished in Hungary in May, was in Syria was not well recognized.
Locals and journalists were shocked to learn of his finding, as thousands of prisoners were released from prisons following President Bashar al-Assad’s ouster over the weekend.
Timmerman, who at first merely called himself Travis, was first spotted in a video that surfaced overnight, which caused some people to mistake him for 43-year-old missing American journalist Austin Tice.
Timmerman, 29, who was surrounded by reporters and leaned against walls with peeling paint, claimed that early this year, Syrian authorities stopped him after he entered the country on foot.
He told NBC News, “I was on a pilgrimage to Damascus,” in a facility outside the capital. He said that before being discovered and taken into custody by a border guard, he had lived “without food and water” for three days in a mountainous region near the Syrian-Lebanese border.
“I was fed well, I always had water, the only difficulty was not being able to go to the bathroom” on a regular basis while he was imprisoned by the dictatorship for months, according to Timmerman.
Then, as rebel troops stormed regime prisons around the nation to liberate prisoners, he was set free.
Timmerman claimed that he had been sleeping outside and in an abandoned house while pacing the streets barefoot for the past few days. After requesting water from a local, he was discovered once more and included in the video that immediately went viral on social media and caught the attention of the media.
Timmerman claimed that before choosing to cross the mountains from Lebanon into Syria, he had been reading the scripture a lot since being discovered in Dhiyabia by NBC News and other media. He seemed at ease.
One individual kept offering to connect him with U.S. officials, but he said he was “okay for right now.”
His incarceration was “actually good for me,” he subsequently told NBC News, calling it “a time of solace, of meditation and I’m stronger for it.”
Before trying to return to Damascus, he stated he now intended to travel to Jordan and would try to contact his family, whom he said he had not yet spoken to.
Washington was “aware of reports of an American found outside of Damascus and seeking to provide support,” a U.S. official told NBC News. We don’t currently have any more information to share out of consideration for his privacy.”
Timmerman claimed that before starting his trek, he had traveled throughout Europe.
Earlier this year, authorities in the capital of Hungary and Missouri filed missing person reports for a man named Pete Timmerman. Hungarian police identified him as Travis Pete Timmerman.
Timmerman disappeared from Budapest, Hungary, on May 28th, less than seven months ago, according to a public awareness notice from the Missouri State Highway Patrol.
In a plea for information, the Budapest authorities had identified Timmerman as Travis Pete Timmerman. They claimed that there was no evidence of him since he was last seen in a church and had subsequently departed for an unidentified location.
Chantal Da Silva reported from London, while Richard Engel and Matt Bradley reported from Damascus.
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