The prisoner freed By CNN was a member of Assad’s forces and had a reputation for extortion and harassment (image-screengrab/LConeCNN)

A video has gone viral where a man was filmed by CNN being released from a Damascus jail. Claiming to be a prisoner named Adel Ghurbal from the central Syrian city of Homs, the man told CNN’s chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward and her team that he had been kept in the cell for three months by the Assad regime.

However, local fact-checkers Verify-Sy claimed that the man was actually Salama Mohammad Salama, a lieutenant in the Assad regime’s Air Force Intelligence Directorate who allegedly tortured people who refused to pay him off. The former intelligence officer reportedly has a long history of alleged war crimes.

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Sharing the video, CNN reporter Ward, in a social media post, said, “This was one of the most extraordinary moments I have witnessed.”

In a follow-up, CNN reported that Salama had claimed that it was the third prison where he had been confined and that he was being held in a jail run by the Syrian air force’s intelligence services until the Assad regime collapsed.

CNN also stated that a local source gave them a photo of Salama dressed in military clothing. During its investigation into the man’s identity, several locals of Homs corroborated his identity as Salama, also known as Abu Hamza. He reportedly ran the Air Force Intelligence Directorate’s checkpoints in the city and had a reputation for extortion and harassment.

The former intelligence officer was handed over to the Syrian Red Crescent, a medical relief organisation, which said that it had returned a freed prisoner to relatives in Damascus.

A former #detainee, released from prison without identification, was reunited with a relative in #Damascus.

The #SyrianArabRedCrescent received a report about the individual & after communicating with them, discovered a relative in the city, volunteers assisted in the #reunion. pic.twitter.com/5WNpISUlnl

— Syrian Red Crescent (@SYRedCrescent) December 13, 2024

Attempts to re-establish contact with the man have been unsuccessful, reported CNN. Syrian fact-checker Verify-Sy stated that Salama was jailed for less than a month because of a dispute over “profit-sharing from extorted funds with a higher-ranking officer.”

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His whereabouts remain unknown.

The Syrian Civil War reached a historic turning point as Islamist rebels seized control of Damascus. The Syrian rebel groups are continuing to form a transitional government. Meanwhile, Syria’s former President Bashar al-Assad, in his first statement since the fall of Damascus, said he never intended to flee to Russia. He claimed that he went to a Russian military base in Latakia province “to oversee combat operations” but by then Syrian troops had abandoned positions.