Travis Timmerman, American who said he had been released from a Syrian prison among The fall of ousted President Bashar al-AssadUS forces pushed the dictatorship out of the country, a US defense official confirmed to CBS News on Friday.
29-year-old Timerman, who disappeared in Syria's notorious prison system nearly seven months ago, was taken to the Al Tanf US military base and then flown out of Syria via helicopter and handed over to the US State Department. A second defense official told CBS News that he was taken to Jordan.
Mouez Mustafa, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Syrian Emergency Task Force, who worked with rebels to arrange for Timerman to be returned to safety, shared a photo of Timerman being handed over to US forces.
“Pete Timmerman aka Travis is safe and sound and back in American hands, thank you to the amazing team at (Syrian Emergency Task Force) for making this happen!” Mustafa wrote in a post on X.
Timmerman, who is from Missouri, told CBS News senior foreign correspondent Elizabeth Palmer on Thursday that he was released from prison earlier in the week after rebels overthrew Assad's government. He said that two men armed with AK-47 broke the door of his jail with a hammer on Monday.
“I woke up to my door being broken,” Timmerman said. “I thought the guards were still there, so I thought the war might have been more active than it ended up being. … Once we got out, there was no resistance, no real fighting.”
Timmerman said he went to Syria for Christian “spiritual purposes” and that his experience in prison “wasn't too bad.” He said he was detained seven months ago after entering Syria without permission after spending a month in neighboring Lebanon.
He said, “I was never beaten. The worst thing was that I could not go to the bathroom when I wanted. I was only allowed to go to the bathroom three times a day.”
Timmerman said he left the jail with a large group and began walking.
The 29-year-old man's family told CBS News foreign correspondent Ian Lee they are very happy he is alive and well.
Timmerman's cousin, Mandy Pantridge, said, “It was hard not to think negative thoughts at that time. We were thinking this was the worst outcome for us.”
Timmerman is from Urbana, Missouri, about 50 miles north of Springfield in the southwestern part of the state. He earned a finance degree from Missouri State University in 2017, the Associated Press reported.
Haley Ott And
Contributed to this report.