The propaganda efforts of America’s most notorious fake news network backfired today, putting one of its most infamous employees in hot water.
As The Gateway Pundit reported, CNN went viral last week for sharing footage of a supposed prisoner “Adel Gharbal” named being led out of a Syrian prison with help from CNN ‘reporter’ Clarissa Ward. The network claimed “Adel Gharbal” was not only left alone for days without food, water, or light but had no clue that Syrian tyrant Bashar Al-Assad’s regime had collapsed.
Ward called the event “one of the most extraordinary moments” she had witnessed in her 20-year career.
Several eagle-eyed viewers, though, noticed some unusual features regarding “Adel Gharbal.” Unlike what one would expect from a person who was held in a Syrian hell prison, he not only appears to have no injuries but also looks relatively clean.
He also had no trouble adjusting to the sun, either.
WATCH:
“Syria is free.”
Extraordinary moment as @clarissaward and her team witness a Syrian prisoner freed from a secret prison in Damascus.
Left alone for days without food, water, or light, the man was unaware Bashar al-Assad’s regime had fallen. pic.twitter.com/ZAnGiBlLON
— CNN International PR (@cnnipr) December 11, 2024
Now, a damning revelation from a local Syrian fact-checking group named Verify-Sy has exposed the shocking truth about who “Adel Gharbal” really is. It turns out the ‘prisoner’ who CNN helped set free is Salama Mohammad Salama, who is better known as Abu Hamza, is a first lieutenant in Syrian Air Force Intelligence responsible for a series of alleged war crimes.
Yes, CNN helped free a notorious war criminal and proceeded to mislead their audience!
As reported by Verify-Sy, here is part of Abu Hamza’s horrifying history:
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.
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.
In addition to his violent past, residents testified that Abu Hamza has been attempting to garner sympathy since the fall of the regime, claiming he was “forced” into committing his crimes. The Verify-Sy team also learned that he deactivated his social media accounts and changed his phone number, presumably to erase evidence of his involvement in armed activities and war crimes.
CNN, for their part, is laughably doubling down on their story.
“No one other than the CNN team was aware of our plans to visit the prison building featured in our report that day. The events transpired as they appear in our film,” CNN told the New York Post.
The post OOPS: CNN’s Footage of Them Discovering and Helping ‘Free’ Prisoner Allegedly Held by Assad Regime Backfires When Local Syrian Group Exposes the Disturbing Truth About the Prisoner appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
