Travis Timmerman says he was detained by a border guard in late May after crossing the mountains into Syria on a religious pilgrimage.
A US man who says he was locked up after crossing into Syria by foot seven months ago has been found safe after rebels liberated the country.
There was hope it could be missing Austin Tice, a US journalist who went missing in Syria in 2012.
However, the man told reporters his name was Travis Timmerman and denied being a journalist.
Mr Tice’s parents also don’t believe it’s him.
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Mr Timmerman told NBC News, Sky’s US partner, that he had been detained by a border guard in late May after illegally crossing the mountains into Syria as part of a religious pilgrimage.
He also said he’d heard other people being tortured while he was locked up but that he was not mistreated.
“It was okay. I was fed. I was watered. The one difficulty was that I couldn’t go to the bathroom when I wanted to,” he told Al-Arabiya TV.
“I was not beaten and the guards treated me decently,” he added.
Mr Timmerman said he’d previously spent a month in the eastern Lebanese city of Zahle, and before that was in Europe.
Earlier this year, authorities in Hungary and Missouri issued missing person reports for a man named Pete Timmerman.
Hungarian police identified him as “Travis” Pete Timmerman and said he’d last been seen at a church before leaving for an unknown location.
Missouri Highway Patrol said he had disappeared from Budapest on 28 May.
Source : https://news.sky.com/story/us-pilgrim-locked-up-by-assad-regime-found-barefoot-in-syria-13272083
