Last week marked a historic turning level in Syria. Rebel forces seized management of the nation, toppling the regime of Bashar al-Assad and ending his household’s brutal 50-year stranglehold on energy.
For many years, the Assad dynasty dominated by way of unimaginable violence—launching chemical assaults on civilians, silencing dissent with mass imprisonment and torture, and presiding over a civil battle that killed an estimated 600,000 individuals and drove 13 million into exile.
In cities the world over, jubilant Syrians have celebrated the regime’s downfall, having deemed it to be one of many world’s most oppressive dictatorships.
But not everyone seems to be celebrating. Or at the very least, some individuals are saying there may be purpose for warning.
That’s as a result of the coalition of insurgent forces taking management of Syria now could be led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a militant Islamist group that originated as an offshoot of al-Qaeda. Its chief 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 affix al-Qaeda and battle in opposition to America. There, he was captured by the U.S. and put into Camp Bucca, which housed among the most infamous al-Qaeda prisoners.
But since rising on the world stage within the final week, al-Jolani has indicated that he’s a reformed man, main a moderated group. He insists his al-Qaeda days and their strategies—the detentions and torture and compelled conversions—are over, and HTS is just not going to persecute non secular and ethnic minorities. But is it true?
Few individuals within the West may know that reply in addition to journalist Theo Padnos. In October 2012, Padnos ventured from Turkey into Syria to report on the Syrian civil battle. There, he was captured by HTS (then generally known as Jabhat al-Nusra) and held captive for almost two years.
Throughout his captivity, Padnos endured relentless torture by the hands of his captors. He was savagely crushed till unconscious, given electrical shocks, and compelled into extreme stress positions for hours at a time. This is to say nothing of the psychological torment inflicted on him.
Today, he discusses his harrowing expertise, the psychology of jihadists, and what the way forward for Syria will appear to be beneath the management of his former captors.
Watch the interview right here:
You may also click on beneath to take heed to the podcast, or scroll down for an edited transcript of our dialog.
Michael Moynihan: You had been a captive of Jabhat al-Nusra [today known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a militant Islamist organization that originated as an offshoot of al-Qaeda], and also you had been launched in 2014. So the people who find themselves doing the liberating of Syria are the identical those that held you captive.
Theo Padnos: Yes, I see them on TV.
MM: You’ve truly seen on video individuals in Damascus who at the moment are answerable for Syria that held you and tortured you?
TP: Yes. The people who find themselves answerable for the nation proper now—once I knew them, they had been terrorists and sadists. Now they’ve rebranded. They’re comporting themselves comparatively decently in the mean time. But they’re taking prisoners now, as we are able to see throughout Twitter, on video. They take the enemies of God, and so they put them in jail. And most of them they’re going to kill, as a result of they imagine loads of their enemies are past redemption.
On getting captured in 2012:
MM: You’re on the border of Turkey, making an attempt to get into Syria at just about the start of the civil battle. And you get throughout the border. Tell me what occurs if you get into Syria.
TP: I met some individuals in Turkey, and so they stated, “Listen, we’re fixers for journalists.” I finally made buddies with these guys on Facebook.
MM: Did their affiliation?
TP: No. They didn’t say, “By the way in which, we’re from the al-Qaeda system.” But they had been journalists for Jabhat al-Nusra. They had been doing the promotion for Jabhat al-Nusra.
When we crossed the border, we slept in an deserted home. They arrange a situation with cameras and microphones, and so they’re like, let’s do an interview. And within the midst of this interview they came to visit and jumped on me and began kicking me, after which they put a gun in my face. And throughout that assault, they handcuffed my fingers behind my again. Later, once I regained consciousness, my face was lined in blood. The man was pointing a gun at me, and he goes, “You’re our prisoner now.” And they stated, “We belong to the al-Qaeda group, and also you killed our sheikh Osama bin Laden, and moreover, you individuals are imperialists.”
I slept in the identical mattress with the chief kidnapper. He handcuffed me to his wrist. And within the morning once they get up for the daybreak prayer, I’m going, “Hey man, this handcuff is, like, a bit tight on my wrist. Can you simply loosen it up?” He goes, “No drawback.” He loosened it up a bit bit, went again to sleep. And as he was sleeping, I pulled my hand out of {the handcuffs}, after which I used to be free. I used to be mendacity subsequent to this terrorist, and there was a terrorist in one other room, and so they all had weapons. So I stood up, and I walked very fastidiously to the door, opened the door, and I ran out into the road like a madman. I had by no means been so frightened in my life.
