A video by CNN reporter Clarissa Ward and her team reveals dramatic footage of how they freed a Syrian prisoner abandoned in a cell at Assad’s Air Force Intelligence headquarters in Damascus. The man spent three months in the windowless cell without knowing that President Bashar al-Assad had already flown out of the country by plane days earlier.
When checking this deserted facility, Ward’s research party suddenly stumbled upon a prisoner in that dark, locked, and airless cell. This guy was hiding underneath a bed blanket. At first, he refused to come forward for several minutes, during which he was raising his arms in fear, pleading: “I am a civilian.
Realizing they meant no harm, 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 offered him water, an act of kindness that symbolized hope after months of isolation.
Ward shared her experience on X (formerly Twitter), describing it as “one of the most extraordinary moments I have witnessed” in her two decades as a journalist. The prison was notorious for its brutal methods and its surveillance, arrests, and killing of critics of the regime.
prisoner still unaware of Assad’s ouster. and her team find a prisoner still in ’s Air Force Intel HQ in in , abandoned alone in a cell. days after the prison was thought to have been emptied. — Qusay Noor (@QUSAY_NOOR_)
It was this detainee’s discovery that reflected the state of chaos that accompanied the departure of Assad. It was also one to show how vile the secret Syrian detention centers were: full of missing people.
Ward and her team are hoping to find remnants of an American journalist named Austin Tice who disappeared in Syria during 2012. His family still holds hope that maybe he might be alive. Speaking to NPR, his sister Abigail Edaburn said, “These last few days have been unbelievably intense. It feels like anything is possible.”
The Tice case is the epitome of many stories that remain to be solved in Syria, still struggling to live with its cruel civil war. On 11 December, CNN anchor Jake Tapper played a video in which he observed ignorance on the part of the prisoner about the fact that Assad had been ousted and how under extraordinary circumstances he was rescued.
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