A scruffy, bearded man who identified himself as missing Missouri resident Travis Timmerman was found in Syria Thursday — and said he was imprisoned after traveling to the country “for spiritual purposes.”
Timmerman, 29, said he had spent more than half a year in the government prison when he was freed by rebel fighters armed with AK-47s on Monday as Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime fell.
“My door was busted down, it woke me up,” Timmerman told CBS.
“I thought the guards were still there, so I thought the warfare could have been more active than it ended up being… Once we got out, there was no resistance, there was no real fighting.”
Video of Timmerman posted Thursday by Turkish news agency Anadolu had initially sparked speculation that he could be American journalist Austin Tice, who vanished in 2012 while covering the anti-Assad uprising in Damascus at the beginning of the Syrian civil war.
Timmerman said he was detained seven months ago after entering Syria without permission when he crossed the border from Lebanon.
He had traveled from Europe to Lebanon for “spiritual purposes” — and described himself to NBC News as a religious “pilgrim.”
His experience in one of Syria’s notorious prisons “wasn’t too bad,” he said.
“I was never beaten. The only really bad part was that I couldn’t go to the bathroom when I wanted to. I was only let out three times a day to go to the bathroom,” he told CBS News.
He said he’s having more difficulty now trying to find a place to sleep at night in the streets.
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