US 'pilgrim' locked up by Assad regime found barefoot in Syria

A US man who says he was locked up after crossing into Syria by foot seven months ago has been found safe after rebels liberated the country.

There was hope it could be missing Austin Tice, a US journalist who went missing in Syria in 2012.

However, the man told reporters his name was Travis Timmerman and denied being a journalist.

Mr Tice's parents also don't believe it's him.

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Mr Timmerman told NBC News, Sky's US partner, that he had been detained by a border guard in late May after illegally crossing the mountains into Syria as part of a religious pilgrimage.

He also said he'd heard other people being tortured while he was locked up but that he was not mistreated.

"It was okay. I was fed. I was watered. The one difficulty was that I couldn't go to the bathroom when I wanted to," he told Al-Arabiya TV.

"I was not beaten and the guards treated me decently," he added.

Mr Timmerman said he'd previously spent a month in the eastern Lebanese city of Zahle, and before that was in Europe.

Earlier this year, authorities in Hungary and Missouri issued missing person reports for a man named Pete Timmerman.

Hungarian police identified him as "Travis" Pete Timmerman and said he'd last been seen at a church before leaving for an unknown location.

Missouri Highway Patrol said he had disappeared from Budapest on 28 May.

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Rebels pictured Mr Timmerman - believed to be 29 years old - in several videos, and said they were keeping him safe.

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NBC News reported he was found barefoot in Dhiyabia, a town just outside the Syrian capital Damascus, in the early hours of Thursday and was getting "good treatment".

The rebels freed people from prisons as they swept through the country - with much attention on the notorious Sednaya prison where thousands were killed, tortured and locked up by the brutal Assad regime.

(c) Sky News 2024: US 'pilgrim' locked up by Assad regime found barefoot in Syria