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An American prisoner was among the detainees freed after the Assad regime fell. Travis Timmerman, 29, from Missouri, USA, had been imprisoned for seven months in Damascus. He had illegally crossed into Syria on a Christian pilgrimage. Travis was locked alone in a prison cell. When the prison guards vanished on Sunday, rebels freed all the prisoners. Travis had no idea that Assad was gone. He fled in secret, running and hiding until a local man found him barefoot and dazed in an orchard. Initially, Travis was mistaken for Austin Tice, an American journalist who was abducted in Damascus, Syria, in 2012. Tice is widely believed to have been detained by the Syrian government.