Last week CNN’s Clarissa Ward went to a Syrian prison and helped free someone she thought was an innocent victim of the Assad regime. But it turns out that’s not the case at all.
First, here’s the video from last week:
According to the New York Post, the man CNN helped free is a former Syrian Air Force Intelligence First Lieutenant who tortured people for Assad and who had committed war crimes in the past.
The prisoner CNN helped free from a secret facility in Syria was actually a notorious member of Bashar al-Assad’s forces known to torture those who refused to pay him off, according to a shocking local fact check.
The network went viral last week with footage of the startled prisoner being led from the prison by journalist Clarissa Ward, who called it “one of the most extraordinary moments I have witnessed” in her 20 years of reporting.
But “independent and unbiased” fact-checkers Verify-Sy published a detailed report Sunday saying that the seemingly innocent prisoner was actually Salama Mohammad Salama — a first lieutenant in Syrian Air Force Intelligence with a long history of alleged war crimes.
“We have subsequently been investigating his background and are aware that he may have given a false identity,” CNN acknowledged to The Post. “We are continuing our reporting into this and the wider story.”
The CNN story last week showed Ward and a camera crew, escorted by a rebel fighter, visiting a former Syrian Air Force intelligence headquarters in Damascus and freeing the man who was found under a blanket locked in a windowless cell.
He gave his name as Adel Ghurbal and claimed to have been arrested by government authorities three months earlier — and said he had no idea the Assad regime had collapsed.
Verify-Sy noted, however, that he appeared “well-groomed, and physically healthy, with no visible injuries or signs of torture — an incongruous portrayal of someone allegedly held in solitary confinement in the dark for 90 days.”
He also “did not flinch or blink even when gazing up at the sky” despite having said he had not seen sunlight for three months.
Verify-Sy then found that there was no record of an Adel Ghurbal in the region — leading them to his true identity, Salama, the outlet said.
Known as “Abu Hamza,” Salama worked at several security checkpoints in Homs and was involved in theft, extortion and coercing residents into becoming informants for Assad, local residents told the fact-checkers.
He also killed civilians during the Syrian Civil War in 2014 — and allegedly detained and tortured young men on bogus charges, many of which refused to pay bribes, Verify-Sy reported.
Locals claim he was locked up in the prison where he was discovered for less than a month due to a dispute with a high-ranking officer over sharing the extorted money.
Unreal. Why was CNN there in the first place helping free prisoners they know nothing about? Are they that starved for ratings that they resort to phony drama like this? Yeesh.