Aqaba, Jordan:
The United States is working to get a US citizen found in Syria out of the country on Thursday and brought home, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Jordan, where he held meetings to discuss Syria's political transition to discuss.
Media reports identified the man as Travis Timmerman.
“In terms of the American citizen that was just found, I can't give you any details about what exactly is going to happen other than we are working to bring him home, to get him out of Syria,” Blinken said. reporters in Aqaba,
“But for privacy reasons, I can't share any more details about this,” Blinken added.
CBS News reported that Timmerman identified himself as an American from Missouri and was released from a prison earlier this week after Syrian rebel groups ousted the country's longtime president, Bashar al-Assad, over the weekend.
Assad fled to Russia after a 13-year civil war and more than five decades of his family's autocratic rule, during which Syria ruled one of the most oppressive police states in the Middle East.
After his ouster, Syrians flocked to the infamous prisons where the Assad regime is estimated to have held tens of thousands of prisoners.
Blinken added that efforts to locate Austin Tice, another U.S. citizen kidnapped in Syria more than a decade ago, continue.
“No update on Austin Tice other than to say we are working every day to find him and bring him home, making sure everyone knows this is a priority for the United States,” Blinken said.
Tice, a former U.S. Marine and freelance journalist, was 31 when he was kidnapped in August 2012 while reporting in Damascus.
President Joe Biden said on Sunday that the US government believes Tice is still alive. He has ordered his team to do whatever it takes to bring Tice home, according to people familiar with the directive.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Our staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
