A video by CNN reporter Clarissa Ward and her crew reveals dramatic footage of how they freed a Syrian prisoner deserted in a cell at Assad’s Air Pressure Intelligence headquarters in Damascus. The person spent three months within the windowless cell with out understanding that President Bashar al-Assad had already flown in another country by airplane days earlier.
When checking this abandoned facility, Ward’s analysis occasion out of the blue stumbled upon a prisoner in that darkish, locked, and airless cell. This man was hiding beneath a mattress blanket. At first, he refused to come back ahead for a number of minutes, throughout which he was elevating his arms in worry, pleading: “I’m a civilian.
Realizing they meant no hurt, the prisoner grasped Ward’s arm in desperation. A visibly moved Ward reassured him, saying, “You’re OK, you’re OK,” as he refused to let go. She provided him water, an act of kindness that symbolized hope after months of isolation.
Ward shared her expertise on X (previously Twitter), describing it as “probably the most extraordinary moments I’ve witnessed” in her twenty years as a journalist. The jail was infamous for its brutal strategies and its surveillance, arrests, and killing of critics of the regime.
prisoner nonetheless unaware of Assad’s ouster.@clarissaward and her crew discover a prisoner nonetheless in #Assad’s Air Pressure Intel HQ in #Damascus in #Syria, deserted alone in a cell. days after the jail was thought to have been emptied. pic.twitter.com/ctZjbiZKZU
— Qusay Noor (@QUSAY_NOOR_) December 12, 2024
It was this detainee’s discovery that mirrored the state of chaos that accompanied the departure of Assad. It was additionally one to indicate how vile the key Syrian detention facilities had been: filled with lacking individuals.
Ward and her crew are hoping to seek out remnants of an American journalist named Austin Tice who disappeared in Syria throughout 2012. His household nonetheless holds hope that perhaps he may be alive. Chatting with NPR, his sister Abigail Edaburn stated, “These previous few days have been unbelievably intense. It looks like something is feasible.”
The Tice case is the epitome of many tales that stay to be solved in Syria, nonetheless struggling to reside with its merciless civil warfare. On 11 December, CNN anchor Jake Tapper performed a video wherein he noticed ignorance on the a part of the prisoner about the truth that Assad had been ousted and the way underneath extraordinary circumstances he was rescued.
