Eastern Syria — CBS News was among the first media outlets to speak out Thursday with Travis Timmermanan American who was feared dead by family and friends, days after being released from a notorious Washington prison. Syria. He said he had spent seven months in prison by the current regime.deposed dictator Bashar al-Assad before the rebels broke down his cell door.
But he was just one of thousands imprisoned during half a century of iron-fisted rule by Assad and his father before him. Many people remain missing and rebel forces, along with the families of those who disappeared without a trace, have made herculean efforts since Assad fled to Russia on Sunday to find the missing.
But there is a group of prisoners that Syria’s ever-changing, rebel-led leaders want to keep behind bars. Five years ago, as U.S.-backed forces took control of land held for years by ISIS, CBS News visited a prison where members of the terrorist group were being held. This week, CBS News returned to the prison in eastern Syria. The guards said it still held thousands of IS militants, but they did not say exactly how many.
Detainees have come from all over the world to join the so-called Islamic State, but for years they have been locked up – apparently indefinitely – with 20 or more detainees per cell.
Prisoner Hadi Alamelhud told us through a small trapdoor in his cell door that he was a doctor in Windsor, Canada, before coming to live in ISIS’s self-proclaimed Islamic “caliphate.” He said he was captured six years ago and believed he should be allowed to return home to Canada.
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“We all make mistakes, don’t we? he told CBS News. “I regret the mistake I made. Of course.”
Alamelhud said he never fought for ISIS and came only as a doctor, “for the people who were there.” But I am considered part of the terrorist group.
He said that, like most of his cellmates, he regretted coming to live with the group, which he considered a terrorist organization, and expressed optimism that he would one day return home. .
He said his message to the Canadian government would be: “Why didn’t they come? Why didn’t they ask about me?
The prison is located in a part of eastern Syria held for years by U.S.-backed forces. These predominantly Kurdish forces currently control about a quarter of Syria, and the director told CBS News that detainees had not been informed of the collapse of Assad’s regime, based further south in the capital Damascus, because it could be dangerous.
“There would be disobedience,” he said. “ISIS has recently been on the move and this prison is important to them. »
Only about five years ago, ISIS has been defeated in Syriawith the help of the United States, and CBS News was there to witness the capture of Raqqathe de facto capital of the Islamic State, several years earlier, in 2017.
But ISIS is still hiding in the Syrian desert. It’s still a threat. In 2022, ISIS fighters attacked the prison, triggering a breakout and a bloody 10-day battle to regain control.
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In a camp not far from the prison, U.S.-backed forces are holding family members — about 6,000 women and children — of ISIS fighters who were killed or captured. The guards took CBS News inside the al-Hol camp in an armored vehicle. They said the security situation was deteriorating because unlike the prison where the male activists were held, news of the fall of the Syrian regime spread through the camp to the families. Guards said this gave the women hope they could be rescued.
One woman told us that her husband had died and that she had been held at the camp for six years. Like so many others at the facility, she was unrepentant of ISIS’s reign of brutality and said she still loved the group.
The U.S. military has hit ISIS hideouts in Syria with airstrikes since the fall of Assad, determined to prevent terrorists from using the regime’s collapse to stage a comeback.
