US man found near Damascus after being freed from Syrian prison

An American man identifying himself as Travis Timmerman has been found near the Syrian capital Damascus after being freed from a prison as rebels took over the country.

Mr Timmerman, who said he was arrested upon entering Syria seven months ago, told the BBC’s US news partner CBS that he had been trying to make his way out of the country since being released after the fall of Bashar al-Assad.

He said two men armed broke his prison door down on Monday with a hammer.

“My door was busted down, it woke me up,” he 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 30-year-old said he left prison with a large group of people and had been attempting to make his way to Jordan.

He said he “had a few moments of fear”, when he left the prison, adding that he had since been more worried about finding somewhere to sleep.

Mr Timmerman had been missing from Budapest in Hungary since February, according to Missouri State Highway Patrol.

Thousands of prisoners have been released since the fall of Assad over the weekend.

The Assad regime was notorious for its extremely harsh prisons, with the UK-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimating that almost 60,000 people were tortured and killed in the prisons run by Assad.

However, Mr Timmerman appears to have been relatively well-treated, telling CBS: “I’m feeling well. I’ve been fed and I’ve been watered, so I’m feeling well.”

He added that he had had the use of a mobile phone during his detention and had spoken to his family three weeks ago.