Canadian in Syria freed after eight months in captivity

A Canadian lawyer working for a UN peacekeeping mission in Syria has escaped from rebel fighters who held him for eight months, the Syrian government said.

 State television showed Carl Campeau being handed on Thursday over to the senior UN official in Damascus, Yacoub El-Hillo, by deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad.

 A rebel source said at the time of Campeau's disappearance that he was being held for ransom by a rival brigade of Syrian rebels battling to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

 Mekdad congratulated Campeau for managing to escape from "these criminal gangs" and said the Syrian government "left no stone unturned to bring him back to the United Nations, his family and his people".

 Campeau, a legal adviser to the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), went missing in mid-February.