A CNN team rescued a ‘prisoner’ from Syrian jail. Now, the outlet admits he was an Assad torturer

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Days after airing an emotional segment showing a man supposedly freed from a Syrian prison, CNN updated its story to acknowledge that the “victim” of Bashar al-Assad’s regime was actually an Assad intelligence officer accused of torturing and extorting local residents. In the wake of Verify-Sy’s report, CNN stated that it was investigating whether the freed prisoner had given their reporters a “false identity.” Following the sudden fall of al-Assad’s brutal dictatorship this month, CNN correspondent Clarissa Ward went viral with a stunning report that featured her crew discovering a startled “prisoner” in a secret jail facility in Damascus. Amid allegations that CNN had “fabricated” the story, independent fact-checking group Verify-Sy – part of Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Network – concluded that the man in the network’s report was actually an officer in Assad’s military who was well-known in the area for his “grim history” of detaining and torturing Syrian civilians. We are continuing our reporting into this and the wider story.” Meanwhile, Verify-Sy stated that local residents “testified that Abu Hamza has been attempting to garner sympathy since the fall of the regime, claiming he was ‘forced’ into committing his crimes.” It also reported that the man in the CNN report has “deactivated his social media accounts and changed his phone number, presumably to erase evidence of his involvement in armed activities and war crimes.” In its updated story on Monday evening, CNN said that it had obtained an image from a local resident that showed the man to “be a lieutenant in the Assad regime’s Air Force Intelligence Directorate, Salama Mohammad Salama.” The network added that facial recognition software used on the image “provided a match of more than 99 percent with the man CNN met in the Damascus prison cell.” While acknowledging that Verify-Sy was the first to positively identify the prisoner as Salama, CNN also noted that Salama’s “current whereabouts are unknown” after rebel guards handed him over to the Red Crescent, who said he’d been returned to relatives in Damascus.