CNN Investigating If Man Gave 'False Identity' In Dramatic Syrian Prison Report
CNN says it is investigating the background and identity of a man featured in a stunning recent report that appeared to show his discovery in a Syrian prison and his subsequent release.
The report, which aired last week, showed CNN’s Clarissa Ward and her team coming across a man in a cell and assisting him out of the facility following the fall of Bashar Assad’s regime.
Ward reported that the man identified himself as Adel Gharbal from Homs, and that he said he’d been imprisoned for three months. He said he had been taken from his home, interrogated about his phone and asked about “names of terrorists,” per CNN’s translation in the initial report.
Over the weekend, a Syrian fact-checking organization, Verify-Sy, cast doubt on CNN’s reporting, alleging that the man’s name is actually Salama Mohammad Salama, and that he is also known as Abu Hamza.
According to Verify-Sy, Salama was an officer of the brutal Syrian Air Force Intelligence Directorate. The fact-checking group accused Salama of involvement in “theft, extortion, and coercing residents [of Homs] into becoming informants.”
"You're okay, you're okay."
A remarkable moment as CNN's @clarissaward and her team find a Syrian prisoner left behind in a secret prison, alone and unaware the Assad regime was no more. pic.twitter.com/Cz6TBWHvts— Lauren Cone (@LConeCNN) December 11, 2024
Citing interviews with Homs locals, Verify-Sy reported that the man had been incarcerated for less than a month due to a “dispute over profit-sharing from extorted funds with a higher-ranking officer.”
The site alleged that Salama had also been involved in the killing of civilians, and the detention and torture of young men on spurious charges in 2014.
HuffPost has not independently verified these claims.
Verify-Sy also questioned the veracity of CNN’s report overall, suggesting that the man’s appearance and reactions were incongruous with the conditions he claimed to have been held in.
In a statement, a CNN spokesperson told HuffPost: “No one other than the CNN team was aware of our plans to visit the prison building featured in our report that day.”
“The events transpired as they appear in our film. The decision to release the prisoner featured in our report was taken by the guard ― a Syrian rebel,” the spokesperson continued. “We reported the scene as it unfolded, including what the prisoner told us, with clear attribution.”
The spokesperson said CNN is now investigating the man’s background and is “aware that he may have given a false identity.”
“We are continuing our reporting into this and the wider story,” the spokesperson said.
After a rebel offensive overthrew the Assad regime on Dec. 8, rebel forces began releasing the government’s political prisoners en masse.
CNN initially reported that the prisoner had not been aware Assad’s government had fallen, and that he learned of it when Ward’s team, accompanied by a guard from the rebel forces, discovered him locked in a Damascus prison cell.
Last week, Ward reported they were at the Damascus facility, a prison building at the Syrian air force intelligence headquarters, to do a story about the thousands of Syrians who disappeared into Assad’s prisons ― in particular Austin Tice, an American journalist who is still missing after he was detained in Syria more than a decade ago.
UPDATE: Dec. 17 — CNN confirmed Monday evening that it had also identified the man as Salama Mohammad Salama, “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.”
