Last week marked a historic turning point in Syria. Rebel forces seized control of the nation, toppling the regime of Bashar al-Assad and ending his family’s brutal 50-year stranglehold on power. For decades, the Assad dynasty ruled through unimaginable violence—launching chemical attacks on civilians, silencing dissent with mass imprisonment and torture, and presiding over a civil war that killed an estimated 600,000 people and drove 13 million into exile. In cities across the world, jubilant Syrians have celebrated the regime’s downfall, having deemed it to be one of the world’s most oppressive dictatorships. But not everyone is celebrating. Or at least, some people are saying there is reason for caution. That’s because the coalition of rebel forces taking control of Syria now is led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a militant Islamist organization which originated as an offshoot of al-Qaeda. Its leader is a Saudi-born Syrian who calls himself Abu Mohammad al-Jolani. A 21-year-old al-Jolani left Syria for Iraq in 2003 to join al-Qaeda and fight against America. There, he was captured by the U.S. and put into Bucca jail, which housed some of the most notorious al-Qaeda prisoners. But since emerging on the world stage in the last week, al-Jolani has indicated that he is a reformed man, leading a moderated organization. He insists his al-Qaeda days and their methods—the detentions and torture and forced conversions—are over, and HTS is not going to persecute religious and ethnic minorities. But is it… true? Few people in the West might know that answer as well as journalist Theo Padnos. In October 2012, Padnos ventured from Turkey into Syria to report on the Syrian Civil War. There, he was captured by HTS (then known as Jabhat al-Nusra) and held captive for nearly two years. Throughout his captivity, Padnos endured relentless torture at the hands of his captors. He was savagely beaten until unconscious, given electric shocks, and forced into severe stress positions for hours at a time. All of this is to say nothing of the psychological torment inflicted on him. Today, he joins Michael Moynihan to discuss his harrowing experience, the psychology of jihadists, and what the future of Syria will look like under the leadership of his former captors. If you liked what you heard from Honestly, the best way to support us is to go to TheFP.com and become a Free Press subscriber today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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From the Free Press, this is Honestly. I'm Michael Moynihan.
The Syrian government apparently has fallen after a sudden rebel offensive sprinted into the capital of Damascus.
Last week marked a historic turning point in Syria.
After 13 years of civil war in Syria, More than half a century of brutal authoritarian rule by Bashir Assad and his father before him. Rebel forces have forced Assad to resign his office and flee the country.
Assad's private residence ransacked with furniture overturned, items strewn everywhere. An opposition fighter spotted sitting inside this office at the presidential palace.
For decades, the Assad dynasty ruled through unimaginable violence, launching chemical attacks on civilians, silencing dissent with mass imprisonment and torture, and presiding over a civil war that killed an estimated 600,000 people and drove 13 million into exile.
The freedom for Syria, we pay a huge, huge price for that.
In cities across the world, jubilant Syrians have celebrated the regime's downfall as one of the world's most oppressive dictatorships has now collapsed.
This is absolutely amazing. After all of these years, we are live on the international TV. This is amazing.
This is unspeakable.
This is us after 50 years of darkness. This is us after 50 years of death. This is absolutely amazing. Did you ever imagine? We've had 14 years of civil war.
Did you ever imagine this? You can't even cross this idea over your mind.
But not everyone is celebrating. Or at least some people are saying there's reason for caution. That's because the Coalition of Rebel Forces Taking Control of Syria is led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a militant Islamist organization which originated as an offshoot of al-Qaeda. Its leader is a Saudi-born Syrian who calls himself Abu Muhammad al-Jolani.
— The course of the battle, as for the secrets of the battle, let's leave them to the unfolding events. You will witness them in reality, which is better than discussing them now.
— In a matter of days, you have taken major cities. What's changed? How are you able to do this now?
In recent years, there has been a unification of internal opinions and the establishment of institutional structures within the liberated areas.
A 21-year-old al-Jilani left Syria for Iraq in 2003 to join al-Qaeda and fight against America. There, he was captured by the U.S. and put into Bukha Jail, which housed some of the most notorious al-Qaeda prisoners. But since emerging on the world stage in the last week, Jelani has indicated that he's a reformed man, leading a moderated organization.
He insists his al-Qaeda days and their methods — the detentions and torture and forced conversions — are over, and HTS is not going to persecute religious and ethnic minorities. But is it true? Few people in the West might know the answer, as well as journalist Theo Padnos.
The Western governments are on the side of the torturers, and I don't understand this.
In October 2012, Padnos ventured from Turkey into Syria to report on the Syrian civil war. There, he was captured by HTS, then known as Jabhat al-Nusra, and held captive for nearly two years. Throughout his captivity, Padnos endured relentless torture at the hands of his captors.
My life is in very, very, very grave danger. I have three days. They're giving me three days to live. Three days.
He was savagely beaten into unconscious, given electric shocks, and forced into severe stress positions for hours at a time. That is to say, nothing of the psychological torment inflicted upon him. Today, he joins me to discuss his herring experience, the psychology of jihadists, and what the future of Syria will look like under the leadership of his former captors. We'll be right back.
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Theo Padnos, welcome to Honestly. Thank you very much for having me. You were a captive of Jabhat al-Nusra, a Al-Qaeda affiliate, and you were released in 2014. Pretty soon after you got back, I met up with you. That was 10 years ago. What is your life like now?
I am the luckiest victim of this war, and there's hundreds of thousands of them. Of course, many have been killed, but many of the survivors of the torture and the detention on both sides of this civil war, they emerge and they have nothing. They almost have no place to go back to. The people who I was in prison with, I don't think that they were well-received.
Those few that got out, it was like, shut up, don't talk about this, go home, and we might need you in the Army again.
I mean, the interesting thing now is that people are watching, I'm reluctant to call it the liberation of Syria, but I mean, getting rid of Bashar al-Assad is a liberation. Regardless of who does it, we'll see what happens. But the people who are doing the liberating. are the same people that held you captive.
The same individuals. I mean, I see them on video. I go, oh, that's Abu Hamza.
You've actually seen on video people in Damascus who are now in control of Syria that held you and tortured you.
Yes. The people who are in charge of the nation right now, when I knew them, they were terrorists and sadists. And now they're You know, they've rebranded. And I think that, you know, in a way, what we want is a monopoly of force. We want peace. We want the most possible peace as soon as possible for the most people. And so in order to accomplish that, you have to have a monopoly of force.
And for a while I thought, give it to whoever is the most likely to have it. Right now it's Al Qaeda torturers. They're comporting themselves, you know, like relatively decently at the moment.
I mean, you've seen this, you know their psychology very well. I mean, you spent two and a half years, right?
And they're taking prisoners now, as we can see across Twitter on video. They take the enemies of God and they put them in jail, and most of them they're going to kill because they believe a lot of the enemies are beyond redemption. But there's some, they think, like me, they were like, he's not so far gone that we can't redeem him.
But in order to redeem that person, it's like they put you... Why were you not so far gone? Because he spoke Arabic? Because their true enemies are the Alawites and the Shia. And those people are like beyond the pale. And they figured that I could possibly, like they didn't know what kind of sins I had committed in the past. My sin was being an American.
They felt that I was like a libertine that had gone around sleeping with women all the time. And also I was selfish. I wanted money. Why did you come to Syria? For journalism. Why do you want to do journalism? You wanted money. You wanted to advance yourself. You were like self-involved and self-interested. Well, you know, in a way it was true. I was dreaming of getting a commission for 200 bucks.
But they were like, you're greedy. Why can't you sacrifice yourself for the people like we're doing?
Let's go back to that to explain to people how you got in that situation in the first place. You're on the border of Turkey trying to get into Syria at the pretty much at the beginning of the civil war when we consider that it's been going on since 2011. And you get across the border. Tell me what happens when you get into Syria.
I met some people in Turkey, in Antakya, Turkey, and they said, listen, we are fixtures for journalists and we ourselves are journalists, which was kind of true. They were journalists for Jabhat al-Nusra. They were like doing the self-promotion for Jabhat al-Nusra. They took a lot of photographs and I eventually made friends with these guys on Facebook.
And, you know, I saw all their journalistic work, which it is a kind of journalism they're doing. But did you know their affiliation? No, they were like, they did not say, by the way, we're from Tanzim Al-Qaeda. That's what they call it, the Al-Qaeda system. But when we crossed the border, we slept the first night in like an abandoned house.
We woke up the next morning and we drove to another abandoned house. And they set up a sort of a scenario roughly like this.
Cameras.
Cameras and microphone. And they're like, let's do an interview. And in the midst of this interview, they came over and kind of jumped on me and started kicking me. And then they put a gun in my face. And during that assault, they handcuffed my hands behind my back. Like a moment later, when I regained consciousness, my face was covered in blood. And a guy was pointing a gun at me.
And he goes, you're a prisoner now. meaning you're our prisoner, and they took my iPhone out of my pocket, and they go, this is ghanayim, that's war booty. And they said, we belong to the al-Qaeda organization, and you killed our sheikh, Osama bin Laden. And furthermore, you people are imperialists.
And so you're... beaten, hooded, shackled... Not right away. Not right away.
Because these guys were amateurs. What happened is these people were amateurs and they pretended to belong to the al-Qaeda organization, which was the only terrorist faction in Syria at the time. But they were just amateur hoodlums, wannabe fanboys of ISIS, al-Qaeda. So during the night, that first night, I slept in the same bed with a guy. He handcuffed me, like the chief kidnapper, to his wrist.
And in the morning... when they wake up for the , which is the dawn prayer, I go, hey, man, this handcuff is like a little tight on my wrist. Can you just loosen it up? He goes, no problem. He loosened it up a little bit, went back to sleep. And as he was sleeping, I pulled my hand out of the handcuff, and then I was free. I was lying next to this terrorist.
And there was a terrorist in another room, and they all had guns. So I stood up. And I walked very carefully to the door, opened the door, and then I ran out into the street like a madman. I had never been so frightened in my life.
Did you know where you were?
I had no idea where I was. I was in the midst of a town called Marat Misrin, it turns out. I went straight to the local police force. I said, bring me to the Jaisal Har, that's the Free Syrian Army. Allegedly, they were on our side. So I said, please, help me, save me. I've been kidnapped by these horrible al-Qaeda people.
And for people to give them context and if they remember this, the Free Syrian Army, which was promoted by people like John McCain and people going to visit and said, this is not necessarily a secular army, but these are the good guys.
That's right. And we had a thing called Operation Timber Sycamore at the time. We were pouring millions and millions of dollars into their pockets. So theoretically, they ought to have been on our side.
Yeah.
But anyway, I arrived at this police station. They said, oh, great, thank you for coming. Have a cup of tea. Nice to see you. We're going to just have a little discussion and figure out who you really are. And then they went out and found the kidnappers, and the kidnappers said, he's a spy. He's an American. Well, you know, look how he speaks Arabic. during the arrest, they beat me.
So speaking Arabic that well worked against you.
It's like, how could a guy speak Arabic like this without having been trained by the CIA? I'm like, I spent my stupid, every last bit of pocket change I had to study this damn language.
And so they delivered you back to the kidnappers.
Yeah, we went to the Islamic court, the Shara'i. That's the court of the law, of God. And this guy interviewed the kidnappers. In an Islamic court, you have two witnesses for the prosecution. And those were my kidnappers. There was no lawyer. And the two witnesses testified against me that I was indeed a spy. They talked to the judge for like 40 minutes.
And the judge came into a room with all the Jaisal Hora guys, all the Free Syrian Army guys. He goes, you're going to have to provide me with a translator. I go, don't worry, judge. I speak Arabic. No problem. I don't need a translator. It was like a capital crime. I was being tried basically for spying. I didn't know this.
Well, the right thing to do when you're being tried for capital crime, the thing that they could kill you for is to delay, stall, just don't let it happen. But I'm like, no, I'm going to talk to him. He's going to see that I'm innocent. He's going to be reasonable. He also recorded me on video like this. They record everything they do on video. He's like, ask me a few questions.
I told him I had been in Yemen studying Arabic and studying Islam. He's like, spy, spy, spy. And it took, you know, my testimony was like five minutes. And then he called the soldier. He goes, put him in the basement. They brought me down into a toilet in the basement. And they locked the door. It was like about the size of this chair. You couldn't lie down in it.
There was poop all over the place. And I poked my head out of the little food hatch. And there was a guy in a cell next to me. And I go, man, what did you do? Like, what's your crime? He goes, we're Shia. We're Shia. So I'm like, jeez, this seems like a religious sort of organization. And within the next minutes, I was in the hands of Mohammed Adnani, who was the author of the Bataclan attacks.
Yeah, in Paris, yeah.
In Paris, and the guy who burned to death the Jordanian pilot was, Qasasbi. His headquarters were in a nearby town there. And he took me to really kind of the cradle, the birth of the Islamic State, a little farmhouse. There was a bunch of Iraqi guys, a bunch of French guys there. And for me, that's when the real torture began, like the—
The torture today was not, it was not Nizami as this, not systematic. But once you get in the hands of the actual Al-Qaeda men, they know how to do it properly. At first, I was so ashamed of what they had done to me. I was like, I can never tell anybody this. I tried to hang myself. This is another thing I was very ashamed of. They put me in such a psychological condition.
You tried to hang yourself in captivity. Yeah, I was like, I don't want to do this, but I have to. And after that, I was ashamed about this. It's like part of what happens in these prisons, and I'm sure it happens in the government prisons too, is they degrade you to the status of an animal. You are dirt, you are filth, you are life that doesn't deserve to live.
The torture, it's like if you knew that it was going to be 10 minutes, 20 minutes, and that you're going to come out alive, you'd be like, okay, no problem, I'll deal with it. But you don't know this. And they put you through it once, and then they bring you back to the cell, and they go, tomorrow it's going to be worse because you lied to us.
They're looking for answers. You describe in your book, and I've talked to you about it in the past, is... They're looking for a very specific answer and they'll beat you until they get it. So is the purpose just sadism? No. Because if they're looking, I mean, you can say no, no, no. And then when you say, yes, I'm a spy, they couldn't possibly believe that. Yeah, of course they can. They do?
Yes.
You think so?
Yes. Yeah, I don't think that all the journalists who are wandering around Syria at the moment, I mean, I suspect that higher-ups, and I know that the higher-ups in Jabhat al-Nusra, which is now Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, they are certain that all those people are reporting back to the CIA. They don't care. They're like, fine, you know, we have a decent system.
Our intentions are good, so tell the CIA whatever you want to tell them. When they speak to their journalist, they go... You know, please, in their minds, they're saying, and relay all this to your paymasters at the CIA, you Jew. That's what they're thinking, but they're not saying that. You are Jewish, right? I have a Jewish father, but I was not raised as a Jew.
But no one knew that when you were in captivity, right?
No, but my cellmate, I had a cellmate for a little while. a guy called Schreier, who's American, who himself was a Jew. I didn't know this at the time, but we all have secrets, you know? There's a lot of stuff you don't want to tell these guys, because you don't know how they're going to react. And in fact- But you have a paper trail.
That's right. If these guys were halfway clever and not just sadistic, they could get on Google and probably figure this stuff out pretty quickly, right?
Of course. The worst thing that I did was I wrote a book called Undercover Muslim. In fact, Adnani did discover this. And he came into my cell at one point and he said, we know you've written a book. He goes, what was the title of your stupid book, you idiot? I'm like, gee, I forget. And I told him a lie. I could not utter those words. It's called undercover Muslim.
But he said to his friends who were there, he said, he's been spying on our brothers in Yemen. I'm like, I guess that's the end. They know everything.
Do you get defiant at a certain point where, I mean, there's so many times that you've recounted in your book that they said, take a look at the sun. This is the last time you're going to see it. Yeah. Last time you're going to ever see this. And that's pretty convincing when these ISIS, Al-Qaeda guys there. I mean, do you get defiant in the sense that What do I have to lose at this point?
The reason why I wanted to talk about the suicide is not because it was an expression of my despair. It's a systematic thing they do to everybody. They want everybody to give up on the life that you're living now. Completely die to your past and to your names. They give you like a new name. And for the first like year and a half, I was dirt. I was filth. That was the name? Yeah.
In Arabic?
In Arabic. So you die to your past in order for you to reawaken someday with an orientation as they are oriented. All the hostages converted without exception. Did you? And I never did convert. You didn't even fake a conversion. I did not fake a conversion, nothing. If they had a gun to my head and they said, we will spare you, but you have to convert, I would have done it.
But they never came to that. At first, as I say, I was very ashamed of what they were doing to me, the condition to which they reduced me. I blame myself for having gone to Syria in the first place. What was I thinking? I wasn't a success in the journalism world by any means. And I imagined that I was going to go in there and start sending pictures out to editors and blah, That was stupid.
And I tossed my life away for that stupid fantasy. And I was angry at myself. But then they kept abasing me. I hadn't changed my underwear in six months. No brushing your teeth. My clothes were full of lice. I was just filthy. And I was ashamed. It's like sexual abuse in the sense that you go into a dark place. There's all these men. Maybe they are enjoying it to some extent. And
they kind of know it's wrong too. What made you think that?
Was there any indications of that?
Because the next morning when they come to see you, they're a little bit sheepish. They're like, we did that to you. They see the blood, they see the bruises, and they go, wow, what happened? They didn't understand why they were doing what they had done. And when I would see them, like our relationships after the torture, it would improve.
And then I would sometimes remind them, like, they were all in masks. And I was in a blindfold. Which is the name of your book. Yeah. When they were doing this torture, theoretically, I didn't know which dudes they were, but I did.
Of course, yeah.
So a week or two later, I'd go, I know that you were in there, dude. I know who you are. And they were sheepish and embarrassed.
Like, yeah, yeah, I did it. And they were masked the whole time? Always? Always.
No, but some of the guys that were trying to have a good relationship with me, they would bring me food every day. Those guys, during the torture, they would be masked. But when they brought me food, they're like, hey, friend, how you doing?
Thinking that you didn't know.
Thinking I didn't know. I didn't know. And I would remind them and they'd be like, oh, well, oh, well. Anyway, the thing you asked me, like, what is the darkest place? And at the time I was like, I can never tell anybody that the shameful thing happened to me, that they brought me to this abject condition that I submitted myself.
It was just the condition in general, the whole thing.
It was the psychological condition. I was so in their power. I was so at their feet. I was so like, anything you do, I will, anything you want from me, I will give it to you. I lied so much to them. You know, I betrayed myself so deeply. How so? By telling them everything that they wanted to hear. By acting. Lying about? I'm a CIA agent. Did you kill Anwar al-Awlaki? Of course.
Anwar al-Awlaki was an American preacher who was bombed, droned to death by the CIA.
And his son too, yeah.
And his son as well. So this is something I confess to. But they have to have known that this is absolute absurdity, that you were responsible for this. Part of what they're trying to create is like a belief force field. It's like belief that is so intense that you cannot deny it. And when you are down in the torture room... It's dark. There are candles on the floor.
There's men covered in guns and grenades all around you. It's like a community experience. They bring the little kids down there. I'm sorry, stop.
They bring little kids into the torture?
Of course, the little kids participate in the torture.
You were tortured by children, too.
They had little child-sized cables.
And the chief torturer says to the kids... Cables, meaning they were hooked up to a car battery.
Sometimes, yes, but also they have like galvanized steel cables, the kind of thing that, like a highway guardrail. They take these things, they cut them into like four foot lengths and then they barb up the end so that when they hit you, like the shaft of the cable will wrap around your body and the barbs will sink into the flesh like that and rip it out.
And go like that a bunch of times, whack, whack, sorry. Children. Children participate for a reason, I believe. The reason is that they say to the kid, like, this is an enemy of God. You're hanging from a fucking pipe by your handcuffs. And they go, this is an enemy. You see what he did? You see what this filth is? Do you want to be like that? No, you don't want to be like that.
Do you want to punish him? Show us that you hate this kind of wickedness, this sinfulness. Show us. The kid's like, I don't really want to do it. And they go, go. Well, if you do that to a kid long enough, over time, that's going to change the psychology of the kid. That's why those kids are dangerous. That's why they have an entire generation of young people that have been learning this.
They were six years old in 2011.
Yeah, that's right. But they have tons of six-year-olds now, too, to bring along in this fashion. And believe me, you go and ask the people in charge in Damascus, like, what are you doing to the kids? They're going to say, oh, we teach them the math and the science. Yeah.
We know that torture exists and has existed throughout humanity and adults do it. I just don't have any frame of reference for children doing it. So it must be a pretty surprising thing when you see that.
It's shocking. It's terrifying. But I was assuming the reason why they're letting me see this is because they know I'll never come out alive. I'm being explicit about this because I think it's important that we understand who these people, like this is who they are. They're doing this every day for years and years and years. And what do we see on the news? Like how awful the Assad regime is.
Well, the Assad regime does this too, by the way. But it's not like these guys are any better. I believe that they really want to cause a psychological death to all their prisoners so that when you wake up, you are more in harmony with their way of seeing things. This is their dream for Syria.
It's like they're not saying this, but it really is the case that everybody will orient themselves in terms of like, where is Mecca? This is the thing that you submit to. And who are the secular leaders around? Who are the temporal leaders around here? That's Abu Muhammad Jalani. That's the guy you submit to. You don't ask yourself what's right and wrong. You ask him.
Because he's in touch with the deepest. He's a learned man. And he's in touch with the deepest scholarship of the Quran and the history of Islam. So he knows what's right and wrong. And you submit to that. They would like to do this for the ,, which is the Levant. When I was there, it was called Tanzim al-Qaeda bi Bilad al-Sham. That's the al-Qaeda system in the Levant.
The Levant includes Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. Provided all those people submit to the Sharia, they're not going to kill them. You know, that's the dream. But you didn't submit and they didn't kill you. I did submit. You did? Of course I did. I didn't submit by saying la ilaha illallah. There is no God but God. But I acknowledged them as the supreme leaders, which they were. The supreme power.
It was like this dark, inscrutable, all-powerful power that can take your life in an instant. And you submit to that. And if you don't, you're in trouble.
Is it so deranging in the sense that you're in a dark cell and you don't know when you're gonna be pulled out and tortured and beaten, and you don't know when, if ever, or how it will end, that you start kind of thinking of these things you know, the way that they want you to think about them. Because it's the only kind of reference that you have to anything, right?
You think according to proper Islamic orthodoxy and that you are in the hands of an inscrutable power that you cannot speak to. You can only submit to it. You can make prayers to it. And if you bring yourself into harmony with Islam, God might well listen to you, only under those conditions. But, you know, the idea is a deep psychological submission to their authority. And I did that.
I was like to the point where, you know, I wanted their approval. I wanted their affection. I wanted, because they were giving me food. If I didn't get the affection, I didn't get food. You know, I needed to go to the bathroom. I couldn't go to the bathroom without their permission. Sleep, I needed that.
Was any of that real? I mean, did you develop any affection in some kind of twisted way because that's the only affection you can develop in a situation like that?
I mean, I would... Not really. I mean, a lot of these young men... And you could just say, did you like any of them at any point?
Yes, yes.
You did? I continue to be in touch with them, and I continue to like them. I appreciate them, but they are... Today, you mean? Of course. No, hold on. Of course.
You talk to... I talk to these people because... The ones that tortured you and imprisoned you.
The guys who actually... A lot of those people have been killed, but the dude who was standing... Over there, for instance? Yes, I do talk to those people. I'm interested and concerned and I want to know what's next. You're concerned? What do you mean you're concerned? I want to know what they're planning.
By the way, you know, this jihad- In an interest in them personally or just in a journalistic way? Both. Okay, both.
It's a phenomenon. It's a fascinating phenomenon that the outside world does not understand. I have the sincerest belief that the October 7th attacks, I know how those things were produced. I don't think, because I've been through that process myself, the process of like dying to yourself and then reawakening to another person, another being. You are transformed in a deep psychological way.
and you are under their power. Now, we believe that when some mujahid, some chief sheikh, comes along to a bunch of young Muslims and says, hey, everybody, tomorrow you're going to jump over the wall and kill a bunch of Israelis and they're going to kill you and it's going to be great and you're going to see the virgins and off you go. And they won't do it.
You know, if you take 25 kids off the street or 1,500 kids off the street, which is kind of what happened on the October 7th attacks, and say, hey, everybody, tomorrow, the virgins. Great. Off you go. It's not going to happen. It's a much deeper, longer... and authentic process of psychological transformation that the outside world knows nothing about.
And believe me, I want to explain how this works.
So when you hear there's a call that was captured by Shin Betar Massad on the day. And it was played ad infinitum. We saw it everywhere, heard it everywhere. A guy calling his family saying, I killed Jews today. Aren't you proud of me, dad? That makes a certain amount of sense to you that it wouldn't make to other people, right?
In the sense that you understand that how people get to that point, it's not just you're going to have some virgins go.
No. Yeah. No. The dangerous thing is it's like not the weapons because the weapons they have are oftentimes like Kalashnikovs that have been passed together with bubble gums. Yeah. And it's not even the number of people because it's often not very many of them. But it's the fact that they have been psychologically transformed. You can't see it. You don't know who is who.
And they themselves are good at dissembling. This is part of what you learn. It is a cult. So every cult member has a double personality. You have a self for inside the cult and a self for outside the cult. And they know how to code switch. At the moment, I believe that the... top people in the cult are all code switching.
They're all saying, we know how to deal with the public and they're doing it perfectly. And I feel that the whole world is like, yay, it's all good.
And even though- And is everyone that you have kept in touch with, who were your captors and torturers? Are they all still in the cult? Yeah.
No one has apologized and said this was... Some of them defected to ISIS. Like the guys I talked to this morning, they were... This morning? Yeah.
I don't have any problem... This is a regular thing for you.
They call me a lot.
They call you on the phone? Yes. Like on WhatsApp or something? They're lonely. They're lonely young men. Why do you do this, though? I mean, isn't it... I mean, it's kind of like... You understand how it's kind of a weird thing to hear, right?
I guess people do think it's weird. They go, you have Stockholm Syndrome. You're fucked up. What the fuck's your problem? You know, for the past 10 years, Jabhat al-Nusra has been like yesterday's news. Nobody was talking about them. But I knew that something was going to happen. I mean, I knew because I know them. And I know how they operate. So do you believe this transformation?
I believe that they want a peace in Syria... For their own people.
But not for Christians and Alawites and Kurds.
The Alawites are beyond the pale. They're never going to forgive the Alawites. The Christians, they have a legitimate place in Islam. You have to pay the tax. You have to do what they say, and they're going to leave you alone. But apparently there were 300,000 Christians in Aleppo before all of this, and 30,000 remain. So those Christians are not taking...
the word of God or Jabhat al-Nusra or Hayat Tahrir Hasham at face value.
So when you talk to somebody this morning who is a member of this group and, you know, whether they were at Jabhat al-Nusra or ISIS or something, what is that conversation? Like, what are you talking about?
Hey, man, how you doing? What's going on?
Really?
Yeah. I miss you.
Really?
Yeah, they say, I miss you. That's kind of, that's what one says in Arabic.
It's not ironic or anything. I miss you. I mean, you don't miss them.
I don't really miss them. But listen, these people, in a way, sometimes they were good to me. And I was grateful to them for this, especially the guys I talked to. Like, I was starving and they brought me food. But no one's apologized. They don't feel that they did anything bad.
Yeah, no, that's what I assume, yeah.
So there's no apology, and they don't think that this was... I'm sure if I went now and I talked to Giuliani, he would go, listen, I didn't have anything to do with it. However, I apologize on behalf of our organization. We're awfully sorry, you know. Apparently he wants to requisition or have all the torturers from the regime...
who have escaped the country, he wants to, like, have them... Repatriated. Repatriated and brought to trial. But I want to have him expatriated and brought to trial.
But the guys that you talk to and the guys that, you know, you develop some relationship with, I mean, would you want to see them on trial too?
I mean, listen, what I want is peace and security and stability for Syria.
Yeah, but do you have that and also want them to be in front of a judge?
Um... They inflict crimes that are far greater than anything they did to me against the people of Syria. One question you'll never have asked by all the journalists that are interviewing Jolani today is, what did you do with all those people that are in your prisons? Most of them were killed. Why were they killed? Because of tiny little differences in the way that they make the prayer.
Like this guy makes the prayer. He says the liturgy a slightly different way from... the way most people do it, and they kill him for that. I think he needs to be held accountable for the crimes he's committed against the people of Syria.
You had a number of cellmates over your time there. How many of those people survived? Very few.
It's like they disappeared.
You would wake up one morning and they were gone.
Yes, that happened. But at a certain point, I was in a prison in Aleppo with about maybe 20 officers from the Syrian Arab Army. and have been in contact with their families. And some of those people, of those 20, like four emerged alive, and the rest, they just disappeared. So perhaps they are living somewhere within the Jabhat al-Nusra control.
But one question you'll never hear the journalists ask of the people who are in charge of Syria now is, what became of your own prisoners? What did you do with them? And why did you do it? The reason they did it is because they're trying to bring Syria into harmony with God. And the Alawites interfere. They pollute. They disturb. And they are impurities.
Christians have a place in that, but Alawites don't. Shia, no. Definitely not. Definitely not. But there's no way. So we can expect, despite what they say, that a small Shia public will be pushed out entirely or killed or whatever.
Like, in theory, anybody. It doesn't matter the religion. It's just that... Anybody can convert to Islam, even an Alawite, even a Jew, anybody can convert to Sunni Islam. So in theory, yes, but they believe that the Alawites, for instance, are so deceptive and so their souls are so corrupt that they will say they've converted and they'll pretend to be Muslims, but really they aren't.
And if you let them into your community, they are spies and pollutants and they will betray you to the enemies of God, which are Israel and America. So they have to be exterminated because they can't be trusted. That's really their issue.
We'll be right back.
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It's the amazing thing that you survived for a number of reasons, but to point something out, I mean, you escaped and were caught twice.
Right.
Tell me about the second time.
This goes to show the extent of the psychological control they have over the landscape, like the populace in general, because I did, in fact, I went to what I thought would be like a civilian-administered hospital the second time. I said to them, listen, I've been with the... you know, some extremists who came in from the eastern part of Syria, where ISIS was at the time.
And the people at the hospital knew what I was talking about. And they said, oh, sure, no problem. We'll send you back. I told them, listen, I'm an Irish journalist. They like Irishmen. And I'm from the BBC. And they said, no problem. OK, you can call up your BBC guys. We just need to get your phone. We'll find a phone for you, and you can call them up.
The guy stepped out of the room and he went up to call the people I had escaped from, namely Jabhat al-Nusra, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. And he called up those people and said, hey, the American that you're looking for is down here at the hospital. Come pick him up. What is the benefit for them?
There isn't a prize for them of money? It's just the kind of psychological fear that's instilled in the people that they're ruling over.
They're exhibiting their submission to the law of God. And they say here, here's the proof of it.
Which is what Islam means.
Yes. That is the literal definition.
You escaped and you were caught a second time. When you come back at that point, you must be girding yourself for something really bad.
Yeah. I mean, I had lived through many episodes of their violence by this point. So this was what occurred then was not particularly agonizing. But it was terrifying because they flung me down at the feet of their sheikh. And he said, I will kill you by my own hand this afternoon because you betrayed me. And in fact, he didn't because he knew he was going to get money.
He'd already been in negotiations with the nation of Qatar apparently. But yeah, it was more terrifying.
But you were a bank card for them. You were an ATM card.
I was a sack of money. And there's another thing that the journalists who are wandering around Syria at the moment don't understand, which is that there's not really... It's a failed state. It's like there's no central authority. Jolani appears to be in control, but every guy who drives a pickup is an entrepreneur as well, and he needs sacks of money. Why does he need this?
Because he's got 10 guys in the back, and they need bullets and falafel. They need to eat, and they need weapons and guns, otherwise they won't be powerful. Otherwise those 10 guys in the back are going to go off to the guy who does have money. So everybody needs cash, and the journalists represent, or any foreigner represents an enormous sack of cash.
The only thing standing in the way of kidnapping those journalists at the moment is that there is nothing in the Quran that says, go kidnap journalists. And they feel it might be wrong. They need to get a special authorization from an authority, but... I think they can get it if they want it.
Yeah. People like Austin Tice, I mean, their presumption is that it was the Assad regime that took him in 2012. Yeah. And his family has said recently that we have it on good authority that he's still alive. Right. What do you know about that case? I mean, it's probably something that I imagine you look into because it's a similar... It is a similar case.
I have deep sympathy for Deborah Tice and the whole Tice family. I mean, I know them, of course. And they have been through something horrible and terrible and one wants to sympathize. At the same time, all the available evidence that we have... shows that he is in the hands of the mujahideen, the Jabhat al-Nusra people, and that he is trying to placate them by saying, there is no God but God.
This is what they make you say in the instance before they kill you. Why do they do this? Because they believe that if you go to heaven... With these words on your lips, it's possible that God will believe you have converted to Islam, your soul is clean, all your sins are wiped away, and he will accept you into paradise. You live forever with the virgins.
So the last thing they do before they kill people is they make you say, It's like a gesture of charity for them. They're giving you this chance at heaven. Anyway, all the evidence suggests that this person was captured by them at that time and place. in which they were active and they were taking prisoners. I know this because some of the people who were in my prison were captured then and there.
How is it that all the narrative has been for as long as he's been gone in the mainstream media that he was captured by Assad and that now that Assad has fallen, there's an opportunity To find him, which you presume that would be quite easy, just walk out, now I'm free, as so many of these prisoners have actually experienced this.
But what you're saying is that the same people that kidnapped and tortured you are holding him currently. No. Or it's some kind of affiliate group, though.
No, I'm saying that the available evidence we have is that he was taken by Mujahideen.
Yes.
And they did something with him. We don't know what they did, but it looks very dangerous and frightening what they appear to be doing. After this video appeared... Are you convinced that he's still alive too? No.
You're not?
Not at all. After this video appeared on the internet, all the journalists looking at this said, it can't be what we think it is. It must be the Assad government because... The rebels, first of all, they don't dress like this. By the way, they do dress like that. They wouldn't take an American prisoner. By the way, they were looking for American prisoners.
I was captured like four weeks after he was captured. So he was also in the military. If I had been in the military, the first thing they wanted to know about me is like, that is the crime for which they can kill you because you have been killing their friends in Iraq.
The people who are in charge of Syria now, they developed their identity by fighting the Americans in Tanzim al-Qaeda, the al-Qaeda organization in Iraq. So if they were to catch an American military guy in Syria, they would go, these are the guys that have been killing our friends. Now we're going to kill him.
The real issue is that we could not fathom there is some other form of evil freeing the land in Syria. We go, it must be Assad. It must be Assad. And in fact, you know, the evidence suggests, no, it wasn't Assad, but we can't see that evidence. We can't make sense of it.
Why do you think that is? Why can't we see something that seems, you know, you spell it out pretty quickly and pretty easily.
I mean, I think we have so little understanding of what's happening in that country.
What is the biggest sort of mistake and misconception that journalists who typically don't travel even to the region and write about this stuff, what is the mistake that they make that you see pretty consistently that drives you crazy?
I mean, they assume that there's one person in control. They assume, oh, now these people are in control and they will all take orders from that guy. That's not how it works. It's like if you put 10 of those guys on a soccer field and ask them to coordinate and play soccer together, they wouldn't do it. The only thing that keeps them together is cash. And each guy gets paid from his commander.
And provided that money keeps coming, they're going to be loyal to that guy. But they don't have enough cash to hold the whole country together.
Did you ever think that these people that were holding you would be in this position today in Damascus?
No, I mean, this is quite an extraordinary... How did it happen? Exactly.
Do you have any sense of what happened? I mean, obviously, so many people saying Ukraine has a lot to do with it because of the Russians. Israel taking out Hezbollah commanders and Hassan Nasrallah, etc.,
I mean, I think when wars are won, it's because you exhaust the other party's will to fight. The Syrian government's army, they were like, we're not doing this anymore.
They dissolved immediately. There was no fight for Damascus.
So they had no more will to fight.
They just surrendered. And these guys who held you have an infinite will to fight. That's right.
That's the difference. They believe that they're progressing either to Jerusalem or to heaven. In either case, it's good. To...
Americans and people in general who are trying to figure out what's happening in Syria, if we were to assume that these guys, despite the name change, the Jolani's moderating rhetoric and everything, if we were just to take them as Jabhat al-Nusra, Can you explain to people what the difference between Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS was?
Because you said there's some people that would flow between these organizations.
I would say there's no difference. You'd say there's no difference. No. At one point, Baghdadi in Baghdad goes, hey, all those people who used to call themselves Jabhat al-Nusra, they're now ISIS. That was his declaration. The way that Jabhat al-Nusra started was he dispatched his four best friends who he had come to know at the American prison in Iraq.
He said, go over to Syria and take over that nation.
Mm-hmm.
And those people were Jolani, Adnani, and another guy called Kahdani. They were a family of happy terrorists at that point. And it grew and grew and grew and grew. And the philosophy was exactly the same. I know that the reporters and the academics, they go, oh, there are these important distinctions between the two.
But I defy you to go and find some dude in both of these organizations and go, what are the distinctions? They're not going to be able to tell you. They don't know.
A theological distinction, perhaps, but do you think that if you were actually in Raqqa, in the possession of ISIS that you would have survived? No, no. So there is some difference in that sense.
The difference was that they had more money at the time. Like, Jabhat al-Nusra needed cash.
And so they were like... So if they were flush with cash, you were a dead man.
Of course. And the reason why I went with Jabhat al-Nusra instead of ISIS was because they made an arbitrary decision. These people in these cells in this building are going that way with Jabhat al-Nusra. And those people in a slightly different cell in the same building are going with ISIS. How do you think you came out of the experience?
And I mean this, and I apologize for asking the question, but psychologically, how do you think you came out of it?
Psychologically, I am much improved, for which I'm very grateful to my former captors. It is a tonic and a life-affirming experience to almost lose your life. As cancer survivors know, and as people who've been in car crashes know, it's like you come this close to death, and you go, oh my God, it was almost all taken away from me, and now I have a second chance.
There's no people involved in those things in the sense that it's life-affirming. Yeah, well, I mean, it could be a rainy night. It could be just bad luck. It could be smoking cigarettes that gives you cancer. But in this sense, to have a renewed spirit and faith in humanity, even.
I wouldn't say faith in humanity.
Yeah, but I would break my faith in humanity and break my spirit, I would imagine.
No, no, no.
You don't think so?
No, I think you would be, I think that the system that they inflict on all their prisoners is good for all humankind. That's what it's there for. And I think that it would do the exact same thing to you that it did to me, which is that you would say to yourself, my only chance of living is to submit. You know, when you came back, I think you would be stronger.
When you were getting tortured?
No, no, I wanted it to end.
But there was no rage or anything like that.
There was just, you know... At first, of course, you combat the thing. You're in your denial phase. Like, I got to fight this. But eventually you go, it's too strong. I can't fight it. And they are too strong.
And the worst bits of that... you came out of this thinking kind of the same thing. Not right away. Not right away. That's a transformation that happens in America or during your captivity?
Probably during the captivity because it's like I so much believed that I was not going to come out of this alive. I gave up on ever coming back to America. I went in kind of thinking, you know what, I'm a writer. I'm like a journalist. This is sort of what I do. I'm good at this shit. And within maybe a few weeks, I'm like, okay, I don't need that stuff. I don't need that stuff. Who cares?
I just want to live. And anyway, so I gave all of that up. I also gave up coming home. I was like, I don't need that America place. Who gives a shit? I could be happy here. I could have been happy there.
You're not being tortured. You're in the middle of the day. You've maybe just eaten. No one's bothering you in your cell. What are you thinking? What does the brain do in that period? I remember, I think that you told me one time you were writing in your head. Yeah. That you were writing novels in your head.
Well, not in my head. No, I have a beautiful work of art that is about what happens when you submit to a cult like this. That you wrote while you were there? Yeah, that they allowed me to write because they didn't know what I was writing.
Were you writing in a sort of code or just anything?
No, in English. They're not good at English, these guys. You can know something about their education by the fact that they can't understand a word of any language except Arabic. They don't want to because Arabic is the language of God. They want to know more of the Quran, but they don't. Tell me about that day when you were released.
So much of what they were telling me at the time was like nonsense. You know, we're going to kill you. We're going to hang you. We're not going to kill you. We're going to send you home. You're going to be going to live here as a dummy, like you're going to pay taxes and be a citizen of our state. And for two years they had been like making up lies for me.
So when they finally said we're going to send you home, I didn't believe them. I thought they might be putting me in this truck because they're going to drive me out into the field to kill me. But at a certain point, we stopped at a clothes shop. I got rid of all the clothing they had given me, which at this point, I was dressed like them. I was in a Mujahid outfit. So I got rid of that.
I put on some sports suit, like a track suit. And then we were in the southern part of Syria at that point, which is on the Israeli border. And I saw that out the truck window, the guys were pointing to the landscape ahead. They go, that's Israel up there. I'm like, maybe this will happen.
So you didn't know, this is a couple of hours, maybe an hour, a couple of hours before you released and you had no idea. Right. None.
No, I mean, I had some idea. I was hoping, I was hoping, but I didn't trust them. But do you stop hoping at a certain point because they tell you so many tales? Yeah, yeah, that's right. You live for the moment. You go, I might make it through the next 20 minutes.
Yeah.
And you're happy when you make it through the next 20 minutes. You go, okay, I got another 20 minutes, but...
And so they drove you to the border?
They drove me to the border, and there was a big al-Qaeda station there with a flag on top and Israelis, you know, it was within eyesight of the Israeli, like, surveillance places. Apparently, at this time, I didn't know this, but Jabhat al-Nusra and the Israeli government were in some kind of collaboration because...
At the time, the Israeli government was thinking, these guys oppose Assad and they oppose Hezbollah, and so we need to help them to topple Assad or to at least degrade Assad's capacity to make war and Hezbollah's capacity to make war. The Israelis were very tolerant of al-Qaeda's presence on their border like this, which they are no longer, but at the time they were.
Anyway, yeah, eventually they dropped me off at this UN post, like a no man's land kind of place. And they had made contact with the UN people beforehand. So the UN people came out and brought me into their truck and I was free.
The people that drove you were the people you knew, the captors that you saw all the time.
All the way to the border, they were making a video, which is out there somewhere. I was saying to them what they wanted to hear. Wait, have you seen this video? Do you know that it's out there? I don't know. They have it. I've made a lot of videos with these guys that haven't come out. Do you want to see them? I would be very curious to see them. You would?
Including the capture and my trial they videotaped, and also this ride to the border where they're saying goodbye. And they were like, what do you want to say to Abu this one, Abu this one, Abu that one? I'm like, goodbye, I'm going to miss you. Goodbye, I'm going to miss you. I'm saying what they want to hear. Of course. I think that there's a part of them that wanted to go with me.
They're like, I could be free. I believe that there is a part of every last one of them that believes we have the capacity to shape our own future and earn money and go off and be all you can be. They don't have that. They have to do what they're told. And they're jealous of us for this freedom. But, of course, they have nowhere to go. They have no money. They have no future in the West.
Once you go over to the dark side like that, most of them know they're not coming back.
Let me ask you one more thing about the future of Syria. I mean, I'm blown away that we started talking and you told me that you've seen your captors on CNN, people that you saw in your torture cells that are active in the current, shall we say, interim Syrian government. That must terrify you in some ways.
I'm fine. The crimes that they're committing are the crimes against the Syrian people, like all the minorities that they're never going to forgive, that they're killing now. And so one wants justice for those people, those families that have never found their loved ones.
The loved ones just vanished and now they're never going to be found because those people in charge who killed them are never going to admit.
And you think that this current iteration of the Syrian government, whatever it is, that this is a bunch of spin propaganda lies that Jalani and the al-Nusra people have reformed? How much faith do you put in that?
I know what they really want. What they really want is a whole nation in harmony with Islam, and then the people that are not in harmony are doing what they're supposed to do according to the Quran, which is deep and total submission. To the law of God. So, for instance, you can't drink. That's why they're smashing up all the alcohol bottles. But the law of God is a little bit arbitrary.
You can violate it and not know it, and then they can kill you for that. One of the things that they killed people for is insulting God. And what is that?
Well, it's hard to say. But you don't expect that... what we saw in the worst parts and the depths of Islamic State and Raqqa is going to be recreated through the entire borders of Syria?
No, because they know that that didn't work. They learned the lesson from ISIS.
So they're rational in a way.
Very rational. They were always the smarter group because ISIS got on TV. They made a bunch of videos and they said, this is who we are. And that was evidently a mistake. And it felt good for a little while. But I was there when they were doing this. And most of the rank and file were like jealous of all the media attention that ISIS was getting. But the commanders were like, that's stupid.
They're just going to get themselves in trouble this way. And that is indeed what happened.
Theo, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Thanks for listening. If you like this conversation, please share this episode with your friends. And if you want to support the work we do here, go to thefp.com and become a Free Press subscriber today. See you next time.
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