CNN says its report on a freed Syrian prisoner is not what it seems

CNN is acknowledging that a gripping story 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 report, which initially aired on Dec. 11, apparently gave a false identity.

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

In the report, 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 change 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 time in three different prisons.

But a few days later, a Syrian fact-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 report, the network said.

Ward said Tuesday that CNN didn’t know 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 time 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 story was obvious. While CNN did due diligence and research in uncovering the problem after the fact, the question is whether the network could have, or should have, done more to verify the prisoner’s story before it was used.

“I think we need to be humble about the challenges,” Ward said on the air Tuesday. “It is a chaotic atmosphere, there is a huge amount of flux, and it is very difficult to verify information in real time on the ground … Stories take unexpected turns. We have to continue to report them without fear or favor, but it is immensely challenging in this environment and I think we need to be transparent about that.”