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A man freed from a Syrian prison by a CNN journalist was revealed to be Salama Mohammad Salama, a notorious figure involved in war crimes and extortion.
A man lights with his phone during a search for prisoners at the Saydnaya prison in Damascus, Syria (Photo: AFP)
A man who was freed from a prison in Syria by a CNN journalist last week has turned out to be a notorious member of Bashar al-Assad’s forces. According to a report with the New York Post, the man was identified as someone who tortured many of those who refused to pay him off, a local fact check has revealed.
The development came after a footage, last week, showed a prisoner being taken out from a locked cell which did not even have a window. The man was found under a blanket locked in a windowless cell.
He identified himself as Adel Ghurbal and claimed to have been arrested by government authorities three months earlier. He also said he had no idea the Assad regime had collapsed.
The CNN journalist, who led the man out, described the moment as “one of the most extraordinary moments” she had witnessed in her 20 years of reporting.
However, a fact check report on Sunday revealed the man, who seemed to be an innocent prisoner, was identified as Salama Mohammad Salama – a first lieutenant in Syrian air force intelligence with a history of alleged war crimes, the NYP report claimed.
The fact check also noted that the prisoner appeared “well-groomed” and healthy. He had no visible signs of torture.
He also “did not flinch or blink even when gazing up at the sky”, despite claiming that he had not seen sunlight in three months, the fact check stated, adding they found no records of the man being in the region, leading to suspicions regarding his true identity.
The report claimed that locals told the fact check team that Salama worked at several security checkpoints in Syria’s Homs city and was involved in theft, extortion and coercing residents into becoming informants for Assad.
He also killed civilians during the Syrian civil war in 2014 and allegedly detained and tortured young men on bogus charges, many of whom refused to pay bribes.
Locals claimed he was locked up in the prison where he was discovered for less than a month due to a dispute with a high-ranking officer over sharing the extorted money, the report stated.
As the revelation came, CNN, in response to the fact check, acknowledged that the prisoner may have furnished a fake identity.
After the fallout of Assad’s regime in Syria, hundreds of prisoners were freed from the Saydnaya military prison, commonly known as the “human slaughterhouse”, in Damascus, last week.
As the notorious prison was discovered, families of detainees and the disappeared skipped celebrations of the downfall of the Assad dynasty. Instead, they waited outside prisons and security branch centres, hoping their loved ones would be there.
