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U.S. citizen found in Syria says he was imprisoned for months

Kids play on a tank abandoned by the Syrian army as people gathered on the Umayyad Square in Damascus to celebrate the end of the 54 year Assad family rule on Dec. 11, 2024. (Nael Chahine/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images/TNS) (Nael Chahine/Middle East Images/AFP)
By Mohamad El Chamaa and Abbie Cheeseman Washington Post

BEIRUT - An American citizen who was found in Syria on Thursday told reporters he had been detained in the country for seven months.

The man, who identified himself as Travis Pete Timmerman to NBC News reporters in Damascus, said he had crossed into Syria from neighboring Lebanon on a “pilgrimage” to the Syrian capital. After being spotted by a border guard, he was taken to a Damascus prison, he said.

His presence in Syria was not widely known previously.

The Missouri native said he was freed after the Assad regime fell Sunday. After wandering the city for a few days, he was taken in by locals, who posted a video on social media saying they had found an American journalist.

Timmerman’s mother Stacey Gardiner told The Washington Post she was overjoyed and crying “happy tears.”

“I want him home for Christmas so bad,” she said in a phone interview.

She said she had not spoken to her son in seven months.

Gardiner had not been notified by authorities how her son would return. When asked about Timmerman, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters Thursday that “we’re working to bring him home, to bring him out of Syria and to bring him home, but for privacy reasons, I can’t share any more detail than that at this point.”

Some on social media initially mistook Timmerman for Austin Tice, the American reporter who has been missing since his abduction in Syria 12 years ago.

In June, Timmerman’s mother notified authorities that he had gone missing and that she last heard from him when he called her from Hungary. A missing persons bulletin was then put out by the Missouri State Highway Patrol, listing his name as Pete Timmerman.

In September, his friends and family shared in a Facebook post the news that he had gone missing on June 2. They said he had last been seen at the International Baptist Church in Budapest the previous week.

Before Timmerman left for Europe, he told his mother that he wanted to go somewhere without internet and write a book about churches and religion, Gardiner said.

Timmerman was raised in the First Baptist Church, Gardiner said, and went to service twice a week. She presumed her son’s travels to Syria were for the book he was writing, she said, but she had become increasingly worried he was injured or worse.

“I was scared he got hurt and needed me,” she said. “He shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”

Syria’s new interim government announced in a statement on social media that Timmerman was “released and secured, and the search for the American citizen Austin Tice is ongoing.” Its statement, the first public acknowledgment of Tice by Syria’s new acting leaders, vowed to would work with the United States to secure the release of all Americans detained by the Assad regime.

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Hudson reported from Washington. Michael Birnbaum in Aqaba, Jordan, and Aaron Schaffer in Washington contributed to this report.