In a rather embarrassing turn of events, it has emerged that CNN journalist Clarissa Ward faked the scene of ‘liberating’ a prisoner from Bashar Al Assad’s prison in Syria. Just days after airing an emotional clip featuring a man being freed from a Syrian prison, CNN updated its report to admit that the alleged “victim” of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorial regime was actually an Assad intelligence official accused of abusing and extorting local people.
To no surprise, however, CNN did not apologise or retract its fabricated story but claimed to have found that the man rescued was a torturer in the uprooted Assad regime and not a victim. Following Verify-Sy’s report revealing that the rescued man was a torturer for the overthrown Assad regime and not a victim, CNN announced that it was looking into whether the released prisoner had provided their reporters with a “false identity.”
Notably, CNN journalist Clarissa Ward went viral with an ‘emotional’ report in which her crew found a surprised and scared “prisoner” in a secret jail facility in Damascus. The incident unfolded when a CNN crew was searching for missing American journalist Austin Tice.
The CNN report showed Clarissa Ward’s team visiting the prison at the Syrian Air Force Intelligence headquarters along with a Syrian ‘rebel’. CNN claimed that nobody inside the prison building was aware that a media crew with the camera was entering. Clarissa Ward saw that one of the doors was locked, and someone seemed to be inside. After the armed ‘rebel’ shot the lock off the door, the CNN team saw a traumatised man cowering under a blanket. The man, who identified himself as Adel Gharbal to CNN from Homs, requested water and food, claiming that he had not seen sunlight in three months.
CNN passed off the torturer as an innocent prisoner
In the video, the rescued man held Clarissa Ward’s hand appearing to be about to cry and claimed that he was brutally assaulted while in captivity and that Assad’s intelligence service had picked him up from his house.
While the man claimed to have not seen sunlight in months, when brought into sunlight he looked up to the sky but did not blink or feel the expected unease in his eyes which was obviously strange for a person claiming to have not seen sunlight for three months.
While “Gharbal” claimed to have been tortured in prison, he appeared clean, well-groomed, and physically healthy, well-fed, with no obvious bruises or evidence of torture. Verify-sy’s report identified the prisoner as Salama Mohammad Salama, also known as Abu Hamza. While he faked his identity during his encounter with CNN’s Clarissa Ward, who in her report misidentified the man as an ordinary citizen in captivity, the fact-checking website reported that Salama is a first lieutenant in Syrian Air Force Intelligence, known for his operations in Homs. He was posted at a checkpoint infamous for the abuses and brutalities inflicted on people there.
Salama Mohammad Salama alias Abu Hamza ended up in jail due to a dispute over profit-sharing from extorted funds with a higher-ranking officer.
“Abu Hamza reportedly managed several security checkpoints in Homs and was involved in theft, extortion, and coercing residents into becoming informants. According to locals, his recent incarceration—lasting less than a month—was due to a dispute over profit-sharing from extorted funds with a higher-ranking officer. This led to his detention in one of Damascus’s cells, as per neighborhood sources,” Verify-sy reported.
It remains a question whether CNN journalist Clarissa Ward fell for the misinformation and lies Abu Hamza told them or it was a fake find and rescue operation to redeem the torturer’s image. However, Clarissa Ward, instead of apologising for misleading her audience, first boasted that the man from her report in CNN has been reunited with a relative, later simply stated that the person she passed off as an ordinary prisoner is Salama Mohammed Salama.
Clarissa Ward did not care to give the context that contrary to her claims, the man rescued was an intelligence officer of the Assad regime, who operated checkpoints in Homs notorious for “theft, extortion and coercing residents into becoming informants”. Despite the community notes on x and severe backlash, both Ward and CNN are defending their reportage even as its gimmick resulted in the freedom of a notorious torturer who now has deactivated his social media accounts and changed his phone number, presumably to erase evidence of his war crimes.
