Theo Padnos is an American who was held hostage by the al-Nusra Front – that's al-Qaida
in Syria – for two years.
It's an experience which I think most of us find almost incomprehensible. But I want to
talk to him about his ordeal: what he went though but also his thoughts on Syria, it's
terrible plight and where now for that country and the Middle East.
You were an aspiring journalist and you were looking for editors to take you on.
I still am.
You went to a border town, didn't you, in Turkey? You went to Antakya. I'm probably pronouncing
it wrong, aren't I?
You were pinging off emails. Do you want to explain? So, explain what happened.
No, I said: 'Listen, I have some very interesting stories here. There's this happening, there's
this happening, there's this happening.'
And they said: 'Who are you? We're not interested. Go away.'
And so I said: 'Fine, I'll do it on my own.'
I decided that I would go into Syria without a commission. I knew this was stupid but I
did that anyway.
There had been a video made. In this video an al-Qaida guy says: 'We announce from here...'
It was in July of 2012. 'We announce from here the foundation of the Islamic State.'
They were ripping down the signs of Bashar al-Assad, they had the black flag. I watched
this video and I said: 'That's a tiny, tiny little unrepresentative group of fanatics
and most of the revolution are these lovely sweethearts I'm going to hang out with.
So all the signs were there and I didn't read them.
Can you explain the moment you were kidnapped?
I had made friends in Antakya with three young men. When we crossed the border we were joined
by a fourth. We drove through this little town of Binnish, that now I know is a very
dangerous place, had a coffee there, drove maybe a kilometre outside of the town and
found an abandoned house. There were video cameras set up in this place because they
video tape everything they do and they wanted to have a record of taking their stupid American
hostage into custody.
They came at me with cudgels and cables: 'Whack! Whack! Whack!'
And handcuffs ... Actually handcuffs like this, tied up my legs and they go: 'You are
our prisoner.'
What was racing through your mind when this happened?
Shit! I really fucked up here.
They kept me handcuffed to the leader of the group during the night. I kept drinking water
so that I would have to pee so that they would kind of get used to letting me out of the
handcuffs.
After they did their dawn prayer, they put the handcuffs back on in such a way that I
could slip out of them. So I slipped out of the handcuffs, there's a guy sleeping here
with a gun, a guy sleeping here with a gun and a guy in the next room with a gun and
I stepped over their bodies one by one by one, I opened the door really, really quietly
like a spirit and I flew out of the door.
When they caught me they were like: 'He knows how to undo handcuffs, he learned all this
psychology of how to trip the kidnappers from the CIA' and they're like: 'tell us how you
did it!'
And while they were having me give them the CIA course in how to evade your kidnappers
I was handcuffed to a – sort of like a crucifix or something. Here like this, handcuff here,
handcuff here, and they were hitting me with cables.
Did you think at that moment you were going to die?
I was on a kind of terrace and somebody was digging in a field next to me. And they were
like: 'you hear that, that's you're grave that's being dug.'
So I'm like: 'Well, I guess I should, you know, this is it. Whatever you want, I'll
give it to you and then let's go on with the thing.'
I didn't want to... I knew that they were having fun and I wanted their fun to be over
with.
I mean the sorts of torture they used – they used cattle prods, didn't they?
They used some of that, yeah. The stuff that draws blood is more painful than the electricity.
The electricity you can recover from right away but the stuff that drew blood, like they
were breaking bones here and you don't recover from that. And you know they're going to do
it again the next day.
It's really the worst, everybody says it and it's true, is the psychological aspect because
you don't know where they're going to take you with this thing. You don't know when it's
going to stop.
The pain of torture is in the psychological terror. It makes it more painful. If you know
you're going to get out you're like: 'I can deal with this until they let me go.'
But you don't know.
They often spoke about killing you, didn't they? In quite graphic detail.
Yeah, they did. They said: 'In Bosnia we killed them this way. This is what we did. We cut
their legs first and we cut them a little bit higher next.'
They said: 'We're going to roast your skin.' Like barbecue. 'We'll barbecue your skin.'
Every day did you wake up thinking 'today there's a very good chance ...'
No. There were days when I said: 'I think I'm going to make it through this'' because
they were nice. The guy gave me like three apples. That means they like me, that means
I'm going to be ok. The next day no apples and no food and I'm like: 'They're going to
kill me.'
They were adamant you were a spy. You obviously weren't a spy.
They were adamant at first and after a while they stopped bringing this up. But they have
a wider notion of spy than we do. Their notion of spy is somebody who bring information to
their masters in the West. Now, a journalist fits that definition. It's a simple chain
of logic to get from where you are now to you should be killed. You're just a journalist,
no you should be killed.
You said at night sometimes when you'd been lying there you would say your farewells to
your mother.
There came a time when I felt that I could beat them at this game of getting information
out of me and torturing my body by killing myself.
That this was my way out. And so I said: 'I'll do it so you guys don't have to.' It'll be
easier and better.
But I couldn't physically do it, you know, I couldn't work the mechanics of it and so
I wasn't able to. I'm happy. If I had had a cyanide pill or a gun or anything like that,
I'm sure I'd be dead.
You've said, you know, for a long period you realised you were just under the control of
sadists. A bunch of sadists.
No, I don't think that they... I thought about this carefully because I listened to so much
torture and I don't think that they enjoyed it. They called it work.
You know, they would tell me, when people were screaming the commander would say: 'You
hear this screaming?' People are hanging from the pipes like this: screaming, screaming,
screaming. The commander says to me – I'm lying on the ground – he goes: 'This is
our music. We don't have music.This is our music.' It is... You know, they feel that
by punishing the people who are the enemies of the religion they are vindicating their
cause and bringing their own membership closer to god. It's not pleasure, it's more complicated.
It's more religious.
If it was just pleasure, they would have young kids in there laughing and having a good time.
But that's not the way it is. It's men with beards instructing the young kids what to
do.
At one point you escaped whilst taking out the rubbish.
Yeah, at this point they had let me out of prison and I was travelling through the desert
with them and I had kind of gained their confidence and trust enough to travel with them.
You know, everywhere was Isis and when their wasn't Isis there was only desert.
But one day it seemed like if I run to a neutral place like a hospital, perhaps they will rescue
me and... But as soon as I got there they were like: 'OK, sit down. Sit down. We'll
take care of your problem.'
I said: 'I'm a BBC reporter. Help! Irish, Irish, BBC reporter!'
And they go: 'BBC good!'
And they called up the al-Qaida people: 'Hey! Your dumb American, he's down here. Come pick
him up.'
Looking back on that period of captivity, what were the things that kept you going?
The reason why I'm alive is because they didn't kill me and if they don't kill you, you survive.
There was no determination, psychologically, to hang on, hang on, hang on. It was I survived
because they didn't kill me.
The day you were released.
I was delighted for months afterwards.
How did they tell you though?
The big al-Qaida chief came into the room and he goes: 'We're sending you back to your
mama today.'
When you heard those words could you believe them?
I thought it was... No. I knew this guy very well and I knew that ninety percent of what
he says is a lie. A few weeks earlier he said: 'I'm going to execute you by my own hand,
right now.' And that didn't happen. So when he told me: 'You're going to be freed', I
also didn't believe him.
When it was clear you were being released, it wasn't a lie, what was going through your
head at that moment? You'd been in captivity for about two years of your life with the
al-Nusra front, al-Qaida in Iraq...
I wasn't prepared. Psychologically I was not prepared and you so steel yourself against
aggression in these kinds of circumstances, you don't want to let the ... this emotional
barbed wire you have erected around yourself but it collapsed in an instant and suddenly
I was just in tears on the floor in this UN truck.
Did you believe it was real? Did it take you a while?
No, it was very surreal. I had, you know, maybe 24 hours of like: 'this isn't really
happening'. But I knew it was happening. It was similar to going in, you know. When I
went in I was like: 'this cannot be real'.
When you look back at your captors, how do you feel about them? Hatred? Pity? Fear?
No, I'm ... You know, they're carrying out an agenda that they ... Their agenda is to
provide guns and weapons to the Mujahideen until the end of time. They say they wish
to create an alternative form of social governance, however, what I think they want is to perpetual
jihad because they're having a wonderful time. I mean, jihad is a lot of fun.
Do you think, looking back, what we saw in the early parts was a genuine revolution of
people who wanted democracy and freedom that was hijacked by Islamist terrorist organisations?
No. I don't see that. I don't see that. That is the conventional narrative. That's what
people believe. Many people who participated in these demonstrations believe that that
is what happened.
The Isis people with whom I was in jail said: 'No, no. We came first.'
You know, it's very important for them, for those people, to say: 'This is a movement
that comes from Islam. It doesn't come from love of democracy.' That's not what they want.
They say: 'We were here first. We were the leaders of this thing.'
So much of the incentive or initiative for the West to support the revolutionaries is
because we say: 'Bashar al-Assad started it.' But the revolutionaries themselves say: 'No,
no. We started it.'
Are there any rebels in Syria today who you believe ....
Of course, there are plenty lovely rebels. Of course. Go and find them. How will you
find them? How will you determine if they're lovely? You know, you have to live with them
for years and years and years to determine if they're reliable and what we really want
out of the rebels is some kind of capacity to govern a country in the future. The rebels,
at the moment, they are practiced and experienced in killing people, you know? And people who
have practice and experience in governing a country are mostly in Turkey and Paris and
London.
It's very difficult to understand what happened in Syria without the war in Iraq. Without
that invasion do you think Isis would have happened in Syria?
Of course not. They always told me that themselves. No, we... we... They said: 'You created us.'
Do you think in a large part they are a creation of the west in terms of the West's behaviour?
Indirectly. Indirectly.
Indirectly, of course. Not a conspiracy theory. But, I mean, in terms of the consequences
of the West's actions.
Yeah, it was an indirect consequence, it was... of the ... Yes, certainly Isis and Jabhat
al-Nusra and their power and strength is all a result of our invasion of Iraq.
What a lot of people, for example, who supported that war in Iraq, they say: 'Ah! You argue
that the Iraq war is an example of what happens when the West militarily intervened but now
you've got Syria. That's an shows what happens when the West doesn't militarily intervene.'
The catastrophe in Syria, it's conceivable that could have followed the same course – or
a similar course – without the American intervention in Iraq. Because there's so much
feeling of hatred and resentment against the government there already.
So many Iraqis have come into Syria. You know, there remains basically no border between
Iraq and Syria today. We added fuel to the fire and we made things more dangerous and
we continue to make things more dangerous by sending these people missiles all the time.
I'm not at all persuaded everything would have been good if we had just killed a few
more people. That's the argument of the liberal hawks now: 'Must kill just a few more Alawites
and government people and that way everything will be more peaceful.'
I don't accept that argument at all.
Because a lot of people today who supported the invasion of Iraq and because they realise
that they're...
Those people are responsible for my torture. Have they reckoned with the fact that they
put Americans in danger and have caused Americans to suffer and go through pain? No.
I meet these people sometimes. Do they apologise to me for what they did? No.
And they...
They're happy. And they're about to come into power again, by the way.
Donald Trump is imminently going to become president of the United States of America.
Apparently, yes.
What are your fears of Donald Trump and for the consequences of his foreign policy?
I think nobody knows what he is going to do and he himself doesn't know. He's like an
improvisational artist so he's going to make it up on the fly. I'm confident that he is
not a rational human being and so he is going to fly by the seat of his pants.
I don't think that he is likely to bomb a Muslim country in the near future because
he has made such a point of our mistakes in Iraq. So I think that, you know, he's capable
of bombing some other country but not Iraq or Syria for the time being.
He's, like, skilful at provoking people and inciting hatred and violence among the people
he's talking to. I think it's almost certain that he's going to do this. It's what he likes
to do. He just enjoys this.
His supporters will use your experience to say: 'This is why we need to crack down and
stop Muslims from entering the United States.'
I think they probably already do. They draw the wrong lesson.
A lot of people will leave comments under this video – and this sounds odd, I know
to say this, but these comments will come and there will be a deluge of these comments.
Let them.
They will say that you should be angry with Islam. That this is – your treatment was
inherent to Islam.
I think we need to understand Islam more deeply and more carefully and we need to know, you
know, what er... What verses or what prophecies are important to them at the moment? And how
are these prophecies and verses exploited by people with an agenda?
I don't mean to say that there's not bits in there that speak to certain people at certain
times. There certainly are, however, we're talking about a religion with 1.2 billion
people in it. So if a couple of guys who are really going nuts on guns and freedom and
lack of police authority in certain places in Iraq, I think it's a mistake to impugn
the other 1.2 billion members of this religion.
But do you think, finally, one day, these people... we will look back at this period,
probably with some horror, but they will eventually disappear one day.
No. I don't think they will disappear. I think we're going to be with this um... They always
told me: 'We're going to be killed. We're not doing this for ourselves. We're doing
this for little Abdul Hamid here.' You know, he's four years old and so they give him the
gun and they give him the religious instruction and they give him zero secular instruction.
So he is not at all a citizen of the 21st century. He's entirely, you know, in that
psychology he's taught, he's never known anything but violence and religion.
And so, no, we're going to be with these people for a good long time to come and our best
hope is to make peace with them. You know? And to try to be good to them so that they're
good to us. And to ward off the attacks that they are planning now.
How do we do that? By having active and positive on the ground intelligence.
And how do we do that? By cultivating relationships with the people who are there now. And the
only way to cultivate those relationships is by being nice to them because by throwing
bombs at them, they just hate us.
Wow! I mean, you can imagine just going through a quarter of what he experienced and finding
it unbearable and yet he spoke so eloquently, so courageously about what he went through.
So I want to hear your thoughts. Do leave your comments below the video. This is a fascinating
debate so it would be great to have a good discussion. As ever, subscribe. I'll see you
next time.