DAMASCUS, Syria — A man seen in video that emerged overnight claiming to show a missing American in Syria told NBC News on Thursday that he is a “pilgrim” named Travis from Missouri who was detained earlier this year after crossing into the country on foot.
Surrounded by reporters while sat up on a bed in a room with disheveled walls, he said he had been imprisoned but had been treated well. He declined to provide his last name and said he was not a journalist.
The video had sparked speculation that the missing man could be American journalist Austin Tice, 43, who disappeared in 2012 just days after celebrating his 31st birthday in Syria. Hopes for his release have risen in the wake of President Bashar-al Assad’s regime being overthrown, but a source close to Tice’s family told NBC News that they do not believe the video is their missing son.
The video showed the man who spoke to NBC News Foreign Correspondent Matt Bradley lying on the same bed on the floor as another man identifies him as “the American journalist,” saying he was found barefoot in the town of Dhiyabia, just outside the Syrian capital Damascus, by a local guard in the early hours of Thursday and was receiving “good treatment.”
After being located in Dhiyabia by NBC News, the man who identified himself as Travis said he had “been reading the scripture a lot” before deciding to cross the mountains from Lebanon into Syria. He appeared unbothered — both by his ordeal and the reporters swarming around him.
When one man kept insisting that he would take him to the safety of American custody, he replied that he was actually ok here and could take more questions.
The man said he had been in Europe prior to embarking on his pilgrimage and eventually traveled from Lebanon into Syria in late May, but was spotted by a border guard and detained.
Authorities in Missouri and Hungarian capital Budapest had earlier this year put out missing person reports for a man named Pete Timmerman, with Hungarian police identifying him as “Travis” Pete Timmerman.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol said in a public awareness bulletin that Timmerman had gone missing from Budapest, Hungary, on May 28th, just under seven months ago.
Timmerman, 29, had been identified by authorities in Budapest in a request for information as “Travis Pete Timmerman.” They said he was last seen at a church and had since “left for an unknown location, with no sign of life.”
Matt Bradley reported from Damascus, and Chantal Da Silva from London.
Richard Engel and Andrea Mitchell contributed.