U.S.-backed Syrian forces are on alert amid concerns ISIS may try to make a comeback after Assad’s ouster

Eastern Syria — CBS News was one of the first media outlets to speak with Thursday Travis Timmermanan American who was feared dead by family and friends, days after being released from a notorious prison in Syria. He said he had spent seven months in prison under the regime now…ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad before the rebels broke down his cell door.

But he was just one of many thousands of people locked up over half a century of iron-fisted rule by Assad, and his father before him. Many remain missing, and rebel forces, along with the families of those who have disappeared without a trace, have made a Herculean effort since Assad fled to Russia on Sunday to find those who disappeared.

But there is one group of prisoners that Syria’s still-evolving rebel-led leadership wants to keep behind bars. Five years ago, when U.S.-backed forces seized control of lands held for years by ISIS, CBS News visited a prison where members of the terrorist group were being held. This week, CBS News returned to the prison in eastern Syria. The guards said it still had thousands of ISIS militants, but did not say exactly how many.

The inmates went on to join the so-called Islamic State from around the world, but for years they have been locked up — apparently indefinitely — with 20 or more inmates to a cell.

Prisoner Hadi told us through a small hatch in his cell door that he was a doctor in Windsor, Canada, before coming to live in IS’s self-declared Islamic “caliphate.” He said he was captured six years ago and believed he should be allowed to return home to Canada.

“We all make mistakes, don’t we?” he told CBS News. “I’m sorry for the mistake I made. Of course.”

Hadi said he never fought for ISIS and only came as a doctor, “for the people who were there. But I consider myself part of the terrorist group.”

He said that, like most of his cellmates, he regretted coming to live under the group, which he accepted was a terrorist organization, and expressed optimism that he would one day be able to return home.

He said his message to the Canadian government would be: “Why haven’t they come? Why haven’t they asked about me?”

The prison is in a part of eastern Syria that has been held by US-backed forces for years. These mostly Kurdish forces currently control about a quarter of Syria, and the director told CBS News that the prisoners have not been briefed on the collapse of the Assad regime, which was based further south, in the capital Damascus, because it could be dangerous.

“There would be disobedience,” he said. “ISIS has been on the move recently, and this prison is important to them.”

It was only about five years ago ISIS was defeated in Syriawith the help of the US, and CBS News was there witness the capture of Raqqathe de facto capital of the Islamic State, several years before 2017.

But ISIS is still lurking in the Syrian desert. It’s still a threat. In 2022, ISIS fighters attacked the prison, leading to a prison break and a bloody 10-day battle to regain control.

In a camp not far from the prison, US-backed forces are holding family members (about 6,000 women and children) of ISIS fighters who were killed or captured.

Guards took CBS News inside the al-Hol camp in an armored vehicle. They said the security situation was deteriorating, because unlike the prison holding the male militants, word spread in the camp for the families about the fall of the Syrian regime. The guards said this had given the women hope that they could be rescued.

One woman told us that her husband had died and that she had been held in the camp for six years. Like many in the facility, he had no regrets about ISIS’s reign of brutality and said he still loved the group.

The US military has pounded IS hideouts in Syria with airstrikes since the fall of Assad, determined to prevent the terrorists from using the regime’s collapse to make a comeback.