CNN's Freed Syrian 'Prisoner' Was an Assad Intelligence Officer
A widely shared Clarissa Ward segment showed CNN's team finding a man in a Damascus cell. He said he was a civilian from Homs named Adel Ghurbal who had been held for three months.
A foreign-affairs error with no clear US partisan beneficiary.
What was reported
A widely shared Clarissa Ward segment showed CNN's team finding a man in a Damascus cell. He said he was a civilian from Homs named Adel Ghurbal who had been held for three months.
What actually happened
The Syrian fact-checking group Verify-Sy identified the man as Salama Mohammad Salama, a former Air Force Intelligence officer under Assad with a reputation for extortion. CNN ran facial-recognition comparisons, which showed a better than 99 percent likelihood that it was Salama. CNN then published a follow-up acknowledging he apparently gave a false identity.
The proof
CNN's own December 16, 2024 follow-up and its facial-recognition comparison.
The receipt. Copy this and paste it anywhere:
CNN's Freed Syrian 'Prisoner' Was an Assad Intelligence Officer — Retracted. CNN's own December 16, 2024 follow-up and its facial-recognition comparison. Full file: https://www.thepropagandafiles.com/case/cnn-syria-freed-prisoner-assad-officer/
Original reporting
- CNN (Dec. 11, 2024): Clarissa Ward's freed-prisoner segmenthttps://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/11/world/video/syrian-prisoner-freed-clarissa-ward-digvid
Corrections, findings & records
- CNN (Dec. 16, 2024): Follow-up identifying the man as a regime officerhttps://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/16/middleeast/syria-assad-prisoner-homs-intl-latam/index.html
- AP via ABC News: CNN says its report is not what it initially believedhttps://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/cnn-report-freed-syrian-prisoner-initially-believed-116920446
Archived copies
Stories get edited after publication. These open the Internet Archive's earliest saved copy of each original.
- Archived copy: CNN (Dec. 11, 2024): Clarissa Ward's freed-prisoner segmenthttps://web.archive.org/web/2/https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/11/world/video/syrian-prisoner-freed-clarissa-ward-digvid