DAMASCUS, Syria — A Missouri man found in Syria told NBC News on Thursday he spent months in a Syrian prison after after crossing into the country on a “pilgrimage” to Damascus. It was not widely known that the man, who identified himself as Travis Timmerman and went missing in Hungary in May, was in Syria.
His discovery came as a shock to locals, journalists and rebel officials as thousands of detainees emerged from jails after the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad over the weekend.
Timmerman, who initially identified himself only as “Travis,” was first seen in a video that emerged overnight.
Surrounded by reporters while leaning against walls with flaking paint, Timmerman, 29, said he was stopped by Syrian officials earlier this year after crossing 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.
Timmerman separately told CBS News that he’d been freed from a prison earlier in the week as Assad’s regime was toppled.
“My door was busted down, it woke me up,” Timmerman said. “I thought the guards were still there, so I thought the warfare could have been more active than it ended up being… Once we got out, there was no resistance, there was no real fighting.”
The video that emerged after he was found sparked early speculation that the missing man could be American journalist Austin Tice, 43, who disappeared in 2012 just days after celebrating his 31st birthday in Syria.
After being located by NBC News and other outlets in Dhiyabia, Timmerman said he had “been reading the scripture a lot” before deciding to cross the mountains from Lebanon into Syria. He appeared calm.
When one man repeatedly offered to put him in touch with U.S. officials, he replied that he was “okay for right now.”
A U.S. official told NBC News 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.”
Timmerman said he had been in Europe prior to embarking on his pilgrimage and eventually traveled from Lebanon into Syria in late May, but was spotted by a border guard and detained.
Authorities in Missouri and Hungarian capital Budapest had earlier this year put out missing person reports for a man named Pete Timmerman, with Hungarian police identifying him as “Travis” Pete Timmerman.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol said in a public awareness bulletin that Timmerman had gone missing from Budapest, Hungary, on May 28th, just under seven months ago.
Timmerman had been identified by authorities in Budapest in a request for information as “Travis Pete Timmerman.” They said he was last seen at a church and had since “left for an unknown location, with no sign of life.”
Matt Bradley reported from Damascus, and Chantal Da Silva from London.
Richard Engel and Andrea Mitchell contributed.
