The long and colorful history of major media promotion of false, government-serving narratives has a new chapter.
Last week, CNN aired a melodramatic report from reporter Clarissa Ward that was supposed to show a CNN crew amazingly rescuing a victim of the Assad regime from the bowels of a Damascus dungeon. After days of mounting skepticism and pointed questions ricocheting across social media, alternative new sites and here at ZeroHedge, CNN now says the “rescued” man was actually a regime intelligence officer, and there are reports that he himself perpetrated crimes against civilians
The man identified himself as Adel Ghurbai, and said he lived in the central Syrian city of Homs. However, over the weekend, the self-described Syrian fact-checking site Verify-Sy said he was actually Salama Mohammad Salama, aka “Abu Hamza”, an infamous and cruel first lieutenant in Syrian Air Force Intelligence:
Abu Hamza reportedly managed several security checkpoints in Homs and was involved in theft, extortion, and coercing residents into becoming informants. According to locals, his recent incarceration—lasting less than a month—was due to a dispute over profit-sharing from extorted funds with a higher-ranking officer. This led to his detention in one of Damascus’s cells, as per neighborhood sources.
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Despite his seemingly innocent and composed demeanor in the CNN report, Salama has a grim history. He participated in military operations on several fronts in Homs in 2014, killed civilians, and was responsible for detaining and torturing numerous young men in the city without cause or on fabricated charges. Many were targeted simply for refusing to pay bribes, rejecting cooperation, or even for arbitrary reasons like their appearance. These details were corroborated by families of victims and former detainees who spoke with Verify-Sy.
On Monday, CNN posted a report — written by Tim Lister and Eyad Kourdi but not Ward — revealing the network had been duped. Unsurprisingly, the rolling ratings disaster that is CNN stopped short of taking responsibility for its failure. CNN did credit Verify-Sy for first reporting the man’s apparent real identity, which CNN corroborated with its own canvassing of residents in the Bayada neighborhood of Homs. Considering the crimes Salama is accused of, the CNN follow-up article ends on a darkly amusing note: “Salama’s current whereabouts are unknown.” Yes, Ward yearned to bask in the glory of saving a regime victim, only to be exposed as aiding and abetting the escape of an apparent regime criminal.
Hellbound and Down 
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