The American CNN network admitted that it was misled by a man who claimed to be a civilian detained in a Syrian prison, but it later turned out that he was a former officer in the Assad regime’s Air Force Intelligence.

Last week, the network broadcast a video report showing its international affairs correspondent, Clarissa Ward, discovering, accompanied by a guard from the opposition forces, a man detained in a single cell in a Damascus prison.

The man identified himself in the report as “Adel Gharbal,” claiming that he was a civilian who had been arrested by intelligence services from his home three months ago.

However, subsequent investigations revealed that his real name was Salama Muhammad Salama, and that he held the rank of first assistant in the Air Force Intelligence Branch.

CNN confirmed his identity through a photo it obtained showing him in his office in military uniform, which was verified using facial recognition software with a match rate of more than 99 percent.

According to testimonies reported by the Syrian “Verify-C” website, which was the first to reveal Salama’s true identity, residents of the Bayada neighborhood in Homs reported that he was known locally as “Abu Hamza,” and he was in charge of several security checkpoints in the city, and the residents accused him of By extortion, harassment, and imposing royalties on civilians.

Verify C revealed that the reason for his imprisonment was due to a dispute with a higher-ranking officer over the sharing of money extorted from civilians, and that his imprisonment period did not exceed a month.

The same source stated that Salama “participated in military operations on several fronts in the city in 2014, and killed civilians. He is also responsible for the torture and arrest of many of the city’s youth, without charges, and on false charges if they refused to pay money or work.” For his benefit, or just because he was not comfortable with the faces of some people, according to the testimonies of the families of the martyrs and survivors of the prison, which the platform said it had communicated with.

According to the platform, “Salama has been working since his arrival in Homs after the fall of the regime, according to the testimonies of the neighborhood’s people, to beg for their sympathy and convince them that he was forced to do all the killing, intimidation, and bullying he did. The Verify-Sy platform team also learned that Abu Hamza He disabled his accounts on social networking sites and changed his mobile phone number, in an attempt to hide any documents indicating that he carried weapons and was involved in war crimes.

A CNN spokesman explained that the network team was searching the prison for any trace of missing American journalist Austin Tice, stressing that the decision to release Salama was made by the accompanying guard and not by the network crew.

After his release, Salama was handed over to the Syrian Red Crescent, which later announced on the “X” platform that it had returned a “liberated prisoner” to his relatives in Damascus, while his current whereabouts remain unknown.

The report sparked widespread controversy on social media, with some questioning the credibility of the meeting, pointing out inconsistencies in the man’s story and his physical condition, which did not reflect the conditions of detention he claimed.