US-backed Syrian forces are on the mend amid concerns ISIS may try to make a comeback after Assad is ousted.

Eastern Syria – CBS News was among the first media outlets to talk to her on Thursday Travis TimmermanAn American who was feared killed by family and friends, days after being released from a notorious prison in Syria. He said he spent seven months in prison by the current government-dictator Bashar al-Assad before the rebels broke down the door of his cell.

But he was one of many thousands of people imprisoned during more than half a century of iron-fisted rule by Assad, and his father before him. Many are still missing, and rebel forces, as well as the families of those who disappeared, have made an attempt to escape since Assad fled to Russia on Sunday to find those who went missing.

But there is one group of prisoners that Syria’s emerging, rebel-led leadership wants to jail. Five years ago, as US-backed forces seized land held by ISIS for years, CBS News visited a prison where members of the terrorist group were being held. This week, CBS News returned to a prison in eastern Syria. Guards say it is still holding thousands of ISIS fighters, but would not say how many.

Prisoners have come to join Islamic State from around the world, but they have been locked up for years – apparently indefinitely – with 20 or so prisoners in a cell.

Prisoner Hadi Alamelhud told us through a small hatch in his cell that he was a doctor in Windsor, Canada, before he went to live in ISIS’ self-proclaimed Islamic “caliphate”. He said he was arrested six years ago, and believes 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. That’s right.”

Alamelhud said he never fought with ISIS and that he only came as a doctor, “to the people in the area. But I am considered part of the terrorist group.”

He said, like most of his colleagues in the cell, he regrets living under this group which he accepts is a terrorist organization, he expressed that he hopes that one day he will be able to return home.

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

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

“There can be disobedience,” he said. “ISIS just left, and this prison is important to them.”

It was only about five years ago ISIS was defeated in Syriawith US help, and CBS News was there they saw the capture of Raqqathe de-facto capital of the Islamic State, a few years before that in 2017.

But ISIS is still hiding in the Syrian desert. It is still a threat. In 2022, ISIS fighters attacked the prison, sparking a prison explosion 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 have been killed or captured. Guards took CBS News inside the al-Hol camp in an armored car. They said that the security situation is getting worse, because it is not like the prison that keeps male soldiers, families are still scattered in the camp due to the fall of the Syrian regime. The security guards said that this gave the women hope that they would be rescued.

One woman there told us that her husband had died and that she had been imprisoned in the camp for six years. Like many in the center, he was unrepentant about ISIS’s brutal rule, and said he still loved the group.

The US military has pounded the ISIS stronghold in Syria with airstrikes since the fall of Assad, determined to prevent the terrorists from using the regime’s fall to push back.