CNN says its update on a freed Syrian prisoner is not what it initially believed

CNN is acknowledging that a gripping narrative it aired last week depicting a Syrian man being let free from a Damascus prison after the fall of dictator Bashar Assad’s regime was not what it seemed.

The network said that it has since found out that the man shown in correspondent Clarissa Ward’s update, which initially aired on Dec. 11, apparently gave a untrue identity.

“This instant captures the complexity of the circumstance in Syria,” CNN’s Jake Tapper said on Tuesday.

In the update, Ward was being escorted by a Syrian rebel through a prison that had been run by the Syrian Air Force intelligence services and emptied since the Assad government fell. That’s what they thought, at least — until they came upon a padlocked door.

The rebel guard shot the lock to open the door to a cell, where they found a man hiding under a blanket. Clearly bewildered and shaking, he gulped water when offered, said “oh, God, there is light!” when led outdoors and hugged the guard when told of the transformation in power.

He told Ward that his name was Adel Ghurbal from the Syrian city of Homs, and that he was a civilian who had been arrested three months ago and spent period in three different prisons.

But a few days later, a Syrian truth-checking site, Verify-Sy, said that the man was really Salama Mohammad Salama, and that he was a former intelligence officer for the Assad government. CNN obtained a photo of Salama and, through facial recognition software, found that it was a better than 99 percent chance that was the same man from their update, the network said.

Ward said Tuesday that CNN didn’t recognize why he had been arrested. Verify-Sy reported that Salama, who had a reputation for extortion, had been thrown in prison because of a dispute with a superior officer over sharing some of the profits, she said. CNN has been unable to confirm that or locate Salama, she said.

A CNN spokeswoman said that no one outside of the network knew ahead of period of the plans to visit the prison. CNN reported the scene as it unfolded, the network said.

It was arresting video, and the temptation to air Ward’s narrative was obvious. While CNN did investigation and research in uncovering the issue after the truth, the question is whether the network could have, or should have, done more to verify the prisoner’s narrative before it was used.

“I ponder we require to be humble about the challenges,” Ward said on the air Tuesday. “It is a disordered mood, there is a huge amount of flux, and it is very challenging to verify information in real period on the ground … Stories receive unexpected turns. We have to continue to update them without terror or favor, but it is immensely challenging in this surroundings and I ponder we require to be transparent about that.”

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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. pursue him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.