Incredible moment CNN reporter frees Syrian prisoner locked in windowless cell: Watch
The grateful prisoner was seen hugging the reporter, repeatedly saying “stay with me” while gripping her arm.
An incredible video shows the moment CNN reporter Clarissa Ward and her team found and freed a Syrian prisoner days after president Bashar al-Assad fled the country by plane. The man was being held in a windowless cell for three months and had been abandoned to die.
“My God, there is light,” the prisoner says to Ward and a soldier who shot the lock off his state prison cell before leading him out to safety. The man then hugs and kisses Ward, repeatedly saying “stay with me” while gripping her arm.
Ward and her team found the man locked in a cell, hiding under a blanket. He stands still for several minutes before the soldier urges him to show himself. He puts up his hands, imploring them not to shoot, saying, “I’m a civilian,” via translator.
Realising Ward would not hurt him, he takes her arm with both hands. “You’re OK, you’re OK,” a visibly moved Ward tells the man she he refuses to let go. Ward offers a bottle of water to the prisoner.
‘One of the most extraordinary moments I have witnessed’
Ward wrote of her experience on X, “In nearly twenty years as a journalist, this was one of the most extraordinary moments I have witnessed.”
On Wednesday, December 11, anchor Jake Tapper played the clip by saying that the prisoner did not know Assad’s regime had fallen. Ward was hoping they would find traces of American journalist Austin Tice, who has been held captive in Syria since 2012. Ward said this secret prison was “tasked with surveillance, arrest and killing of all regime critics.”
Tice’s siblings recently told NPR that they have been told their brother is alive and still in Syria. “These past few days have been incredibly intense and it does feel so different than how it’s felt in the past. It feels like anything is possible,” Abigail Edaburn, Tice’s sister, said.