NEW: CNN Reporter Got Duped, Humiliated By Syrian Rebels: ‘Notorious Torturer’

A Syrian war correspondent for CNN may have been tricked into accidentally releasing a “notorious torturer” from a Syrian prison while covering rebel efforts to extricate black site prisoners following the fall of the Assad regime.

The New York Post reported that an independent fact-checking organization concluded the man who journalist Clarissa Ward helped “rescue” from a decrepit prison cell was actually Salama Mohammad Salama, a first lieutenant in the Syrian Air Force intelligence who was notorious for torturing young men on bogus charges, such as not paying bribes while crossing checkpoints. CNN acknowledged in a statement that Salama may have given the reporter a false name when she and other rebels discovered him sleeping under a blanket inside a former Air Force intelligence headquarters in Damascus. “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.”

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The CNN story last week showed Ward entering the facility accompanied by Syrian rebel fighters as they searched for some of the thousands of political prisoners indefinitely interned by the Assad regime. Camera crews captured the moment when Salama was discovered in a windowless cell. He told Ward and her colleagues that he had no idea the Assad regime had collapsed and that he hadn’t seen the sun in months. However, Verify-Sy, a Syria-based fact-checking organization, noted 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,” a reaction incongruous with being kept in the dark for months on end.

When he was found, Salama told Ward his name was Adel Ghurbal, but Verify-Sy found no record of a prisoner by that name being kept at the Damascus Air Force base. The organization added in its own report that locals it spoke with claimed Salama had been imprisoned for less than a month after arguing with a high-ranking officer over his share of recent extortion money. During the CNN report, Salama was freed by rebel fighters, fed a meal, and later taken away by EMTs.

CNN denied that its report was fabricated. “No one other than the CNN team was aware of our plans to visit the prison building featured in our report that day. The events transpired as they appear in our film,” CNN said.

WATCH:

Known as “Abu Hamza,” Salama was an inglorious figure who helped keep Assad’s iron-fisted regime intact. According to the Post, he worked at several security checkpoints in Homs, where he was involved in theft and extortion against local residents, some of whom said they were pressured to become spies against their friends and neighbors. Verify-Sy reported he killed for the regime during Syria’s 2014 civil war, including young men who refused to pay the high bribes he and other officers demanded.

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