Missing American Man Found In Syria After Being Freed From Prison 

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OAN Staff Abril Elfi
10:31 AM – Saturday, December 14, 2024

A Missouri man has been found in Syria after being imprisoned for months. 

On Thursday, the man who identified himself as Travis Timmerman was found after he spent months in a Syrian prison after he crossed into the country on a “pilgrimage” to Damascus.

According to reports, it was not widely known that the man who disappeared in Hungary in May, was in Syria. 

His discovery came as thousands of detainees were released from jails following President Bashar al-Assad’s overthrow over the weekend.

Timmerman was first seen in a video that surfaced overnight, leading some to mistake him for missing American journalist Austin Tice.

Timmerman, 29, told reporters that Syrian officials stopped him this year after he crossed into the country on foot. 

“I was on a pilgrimage to Damascus,” he told NBC News in a building on the outskirts of the capital. 

He continued stating that he had spent three days living in a mountain area around the border between Lebanon and Syria “without food and water” before he was spotted by a border guard and detained.

Timmerman then said that the regime imprisoned him for months, during which he “was fed well,  always had water, and the only difficulty was not being able to go to the bathroom” regularly.

Rebel forces freed him as they stormed regime prisons nationwide to release detainees.

Timmerman recounted spending several days wandering barefoot through the streets, sleeping outdoors and in an abandoned house. A local resident, whom he approached for water, eventually discovered him. Shortly after, he appeared in a video that quickly circulated on social media, drawing widespread media attention.

When he was found in Dhiyabia, Timmerman shared that he had “been reading the scripture a lot” before deciding to cross the mountains from Lebanon into Syria. 

Reportedly, a man repeatedly offered to put him in touch with U.S. officials, he replied that he was “OK for right now.”

He later told NBC News that he felt his imprisonment was “actually good for me,” describing it as “a time of solace, of meditation, and I’m stronger for it.”

Timmerman revealed that he had been in Europe before embarking on his pilgrimage.  

Earlier this year, authorities in Missouri and Budapest, Hungary, issued missing person reports for a man named Pete Timmerman, whom Hungarian police identified as “Travis Pete Timmerman.”  

According to a public awareness bulletin from the Missouri State Highway Patrol, Timmerman disappeared from Budapest on May 28^th, nearly seven months ago. Hungarian authorities noted in their request for information that Timmerman was last seen at a church and had since “left for an unknown location, with no signs of life.”

Timmerman stated that he intends to travel to Jordan before attempting to return to Damascus, where he hopes to contact his family, with whom he has yet to speak.

A U.S. official stated that Washington was “aware of reports of an American found outside of Damascus and seeking to provide support. Out of respect for his privacy, we have no further information to provide at this time.”

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