U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed Thursday in Aqaba, Jordan, that an American citizen had been found in Syria and that the Biden-Harris administration was working to bring him home.
Blinken did not identify the American, but he was described on social media as Travis Timmerman, a resident of the state of Missouri.
Videos had circulated Thursday of Syrian rebels caring for an American who, they said, had been found in one of the prisons of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which collapsed on Sunday amid the rebel advance.
It was not known exactly how or why Timmerman reached Syria, or why he was imprisoned. He was reported to have been tortured by the regime.
As Breitbart News reported earlier Thursday:
Timmerman appears to be a civilian who independently decided to travel to Syria for personal reasons. He told reporters that he is a Christian and had “been reading Scripture a lot” when he disappeared in Hungary. The readings convinced him to make “a pilgrimage to Damascus,” an ancient city that plays a major role in the conversion of Saint Paul. Timmerman reportedly walked into Syria illegally and was arrested by border patrol after roaming the border region for three days.
Tice, a journalist, has been missing since 2012. The U.S. believes that he is still alive.
Other prisoners — many gone for decades — have surfaced from Assad’s prisons, including Christian activists abducted from Lebanon.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
