Coverage dated December 15, 2024 to December 16, 2024
Freed prisoner who said he was a victim of the Assad regime was an intelligence officer, locals say
Headline from KESQ Palm Springs
By Tim Lister and Eyad Kourdi, CNN (CNN) — A man who was filmed by CNN being released by rebels from a Damascus jail was a former intelligence officer with the deposed Syrian regime, according to local residents, and not an ordinary citizen who had been imprisoned, as he had claimed.
KESQ Palm Springs's own description from its feed. We collect headlines and these descriptions, not full articles; read the original reporting below.
CNN is investigating the identity of a man the network filmed being “rescued” from an Assad regime prison as a new report reveals the purported prisoner was actually a notorious member Syrian Air Force Intelligence who tortured those who refused to pay him off.
The prisoner CNN escorted out of jail after he was freed by Syrian rebels was actually Salama Mohammad Salama , a notorious member of ousted President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, who tricked the outlet and rebels into helping him, according to a local fact checker.
By Tim Lister and Eyad Kourdi, CNN (CNN) — A man who was filmed by CNN being released by rebels from a Damascus jail was a former intelligence officer with the deposed Syrian regime, according to local residents, and not an ordinary citizen who had been imprisoned, as he had claimed.
The prisoner CNN's Clarissa Ward purportedly discovered and helped free from a secret Syrian facility last week is actually an intelligence agent who served in Bashar al-Assad's regime and helped the brutal dictator torture and kill civilians, a Syrian news watchdog said Sunday.
UPDATED: CNN's Clarissa Ward said that a man identified in her report as a prisoner under the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad, the deposed dictator, was in fact an intelligence officer.
"He participated in military operations on several fronts in Homs in 2014, killed civilians, and was responsible for detaining and torturing numerous young men in the city without cause or on fabricated charges."
CNN admitted on Monday that it had been misled by a man who the network initially reported to be a Syrian prisoner freed from a secret jail as CNN cameras rolled.
