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A bearded, disheveled individual who claimed to be Travis Timmerman, a missing Missouri man, was discovered in Syria on Thursday, explaining he had been incarcerated after entering the country seeking spiritual fulfillment.

The 29-year-old recounted his release by rebel fighters wielding AK-47s on Monday, following the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime after spending over six months in a government detention facility.

“My door was busted down, it woke me up,” Timmerman told CBS.

“I thought the guards were still there, so I thought the warfare could have been more active than it ended up being… Once we got out, there was no resistance, there was no real fighting.”

The emergence of Timmerman’s footage, shared by Turkish news outlet Anadolu, initially led to confusion about whether he might be Austin Tice, an American journalist who disappeared while documenting the anti-Assad uprising in Damascus in 2012.

Timmerman explained his detention occurred after he illegally crossed into Syria from Lebanon seven months ago. He described himself as a religious “pilgrim” to NBC News, noting he had journeyed from Europe to Lebanon for spiritual reasons.

Reflecting on his time in Syria’s infamous prison system, he downplayed the severity of his experience, stating it “wasn’t too bad.”

“I was never beaten. The only really bad part was that I couldn’t go to the bathroom when I wanted to. I was only let out three times a day to go to the bathroom,” he told CBS News.

Currently, he expressed greater concern about finding nightly shelter on the streets.