SURPRISE

American Man Freed From Syrian Prison Amid Assad Collapse

Travis “Pete” Timmerman, 29, was released from a jail in Damascus after Bashar al-Assad’s regime fell.

A missing American man who was not thought to be in Syria was found inside one of Bashar al-Assad’s hellish jails after the dictator was toppled late last week. It was initially thought that the bearded man with straggly hair might be American journalist Austin Tice, 43, who disappeared in 2012 in Syria. But the man identified himself as Travis Timmerman, 29. Authorities in the U.S. said that Timmerman, who also goes by “Pete,” had gone missing from Budapest, Hungary, nearly seven months ago. However, it was not widely known he was in the Middle East. He said he trekked to Syria on a pilgrimage from Lebanon before he was detained by a border guard and thrown in jail. “I was on a pilgrimage to Damascus,” he told NBC News from the capital. He was freed from jail earlier in the week, he said, when the Assad regime was toppled. A U.S. official said authorities were “seeking to provide support.”