Syrian prisoner freed by CNN’s Clarissa Ward may have been an undercover intelligence officer

CNN may have been duped by a so-called “hidden prisoner” from a Syrian prison who one news agency claims is actually a first lieutenant in the Syrian Air Force’s intelligence service. During one segment, CNN’s Clarissa Ward and a rebel fighter revealed a prisoner apparently still unaware of the ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

CNN has since said so the network investigates the man’s background more closely.

The Verify-SY news agency – which claims to be a media platform that identifies fake news and corrects it – identified the “prisoner” as a Syrian officer believed to have killed civilians and detained and tortured young men in Homs. His release as a prisoner, the organization tweeted, “appears to attempt to rehabilitate his image.”

CNN captured the moment Ward found the man, who was wrapped in a blanket in a locked cell in an empty prison.

“We sought to do a story about the tens of thousands of Syrians who have disappeared into Assad’s dungeons, and particularly also about an American journalist, Austin Tice, who disappeared,” Ward later reported on CNN.

Ward was shown entering the cell after a guard shot the lock.

“Is anyone there?” Ward asks several times. The man emerged from under the lid with raised hands.

A CNN translation said the man claimed he had been in the cell for three months.

“You’re okay, you’re okay,” Ward tells him, helping him out into the open and into a vehicle.

Social media quickly questioned the scenario.

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