Formaldehyde
Both Fair And Balanced
American Tells of Odyssey as Prisoner of Syrian Rebels
I didn't know anything about this until I just saw Matthew Schrier on 60 Minutes tonight. Don't you think it is odd that so many Americans are being held captive and even tortured in Syria, but there has been little or no publicity about it?
Matthew Schrier was helpless. An American photographer held in a rebel-controlled prison in the Syrian city of Aleppo, he and a fellow prisoner had been caught trying to gouge a hole in their cell’s wooden door. The captors took his cellmate, he said, beat him, and brought him back with blood-streaked ankles and feet.
Now was Mr. Schrier’s turn.
Wearing masks, his jailers led him out, sat him down and forced a car tire over his knees. They slid a wooden rod behind his legs, locking the tire in place. Then they rolled him over. Mr. Schrier was face down on a basement floor, he said, legs immobilized, bare feet facing up.
“Give him 115,” one of his captors said in English, as they began whipping his feet with a metal cable.
When the torture ended Mr. Schrier could not walk. His captors, he said, dragged him to his cell. He remembers their parting phrase: “Have you heard of Guantánamo Bay?”
For seven months, Mr. Schrier, 35, was a prisoner in Syria of jihadi fighters opposed to President Bashar al-Assad. Held in bases and prisons run by two Islamist rebel groups, he said, he was robbed, beaten and accused of being an American spy by men who then assumed his identity online.
Mr. Schrier escaped on July 29, he said, by squeezing out of a basement window and wandering, in shoes too small and with the long beard he had grown in captivity, through Aleppo until he found other rebels.
These men protected him and drove him the next day to Turkish authorities at the border. American diplomats soon whisked Mr. Schrier away.
Now in the United States, Mr. Schrier has returned with a firsthand account of the descent by elements of the anti-Assad forces into sanctimonious hatred and crime. His experience reflects the sharply deteriorated climate for foreigners and moderate Syrians in areas subject to the whims of armed religious groups whose members roam roads, staff checkpoints and occupy a constellation of guerrilla bases.
Mr. Schrier’s detention is one of more than 15 cases of Westerners, mostly journalists, being abducted or disappearing in Syria this year. The victims range from seasoned correspondents to new freelancers, like Mr. Schrier, who was covering his first war.
Some were abducted in 2012, others a few weeks ago. Many are thought to be held by two Al Qaeda-aligned groups. At least one is believed to be a captive of Mr. Assad’s intelligence services.
For many cases there are few leads. The victims have vanished — a pattern that makes Mr. Schrier’s account exceptional and rare.
Mr. Schrier said his captors were mostly members of the Nusra Front, a group aligned with Al Qaeda and designated a terrorist organization by the United Nations and the United States.
But as he was moved from prison to prison, he said, he and his main cellmate, another American, were also held by a unit of Ahrar al-Sham, an Islamist group that works closely with the Free Syrian Army, a rebel umbrella group recognized by Western and Arab governments.
His captors, Mr. Schrier said, held other prisoners, including Syrian soldiers and military officers, members of loyalist militias and a Syrian legislator.
These men, he said, were held in anticipation of a prisoner exchange. Others were locked up in civil disputes the Islamists intended to adjudicate, including a mechanic accused of defrauding a man with a shoddy car repair.
Their captors neither publicly acknowledged holding them nor issued any demands. Their abductions were also not disclosed by their families or the American government.
At his family’s request, The New York Times is withholding identifying details of the other American prisoner, who did not escape and whose whereabouts and condition are unknown.
Kidnapped From a Taxi
When he set out for Syria last year, Mr. Schrier was new to war photography. Born in Syosset, N.Y., he had attended film school at Hofstra, but found no job in his field and opted to work for nearly a decade in the health care industry, negotiating rates and claims.
The travel and artistry in photography appealed to him, as did the chance at a fresh start. “I wanted to enjoy my work for a change,” he said.
His plunge into the story was swift. He traveled in November from New York to Turkey and Jordan, where he photographed convalescing rebels and ventured across the border to an encampment of displaced Syrian families.
After an activist offered to take him to Aleppo, Mr. Schrier returned in December and was brought to a small rebel group fighting in a neighborhood and at the siege of an Air Force intelligence compound.
Mr. Schrier spent 18 days in Syria. His photographs were strong, he said. He was eager to return to Turkey and publish them.
But there was a complication. His expected driver did not arrive. After waiting for more than a day, his hosts arranged a taxi with a driver they said he could trust.
Their ride out began at midday on Dec. 31. As they left Aleppo, rebels halted the taxi at the Sheikh Najjar industrial area, through which journalists frequently passed.
They forbade the taxi from crossing. The driver tried a route through Muslimiyah, and was passing a recently captured military school, Mr. Schrier said, when a silver Jeep Cherokee forced the taxi to stop.
At least three men stepped out. One wore a black scarf over his face.
They escorted Mr. Schrier out. “They were so nonchalant,” he said. “They didn’t point a gun at me, and moved me very gently.”
Mr. Schrier said he expected that they would look at his photographs, confirm his work and release him. They directed him to the back seat of their S.U.V., pulled his knit cap over his eyes, leaned him forward and pressed a rifle muzzle to his head.
His captivity had begun.
(The driver later resurfaced with widely shifting tales of what had happened, according to people familiar with his accounts. Mr. Schrier said the man probably participated in his abduction.)
One man, whose name Mr. Schrier learned was Mohammad, spoke broken English and gave him a nickname: Juma, the Arabic word for Friday. A man who used the name Abdullah arrived.
“We have information that there are C.I.A. agents in the area,” he said.
Mr. Schrier said he risked an argument. “My socks don’t match and you think I’m in the C.I.A.?” he said.
His captors put him in a lightless room. Mr. Schrier paced — 22 foot lengths one way, 12 the other.
Repeated Interrogations
The next day, Jan. 1, Mr. Schrier heard other prisoners screaming while being beaten. The sounds continued intermittently for hours.
“I was just pacing back and forth waiting for my turn,” he said.
When his captors came for him, they told him they had seen his photographs. Mr. Schrier explained his work and gave references among the rebels.
Abdullah said that if his story was accurate they would release him.
Mr. Schrier waited several days. Guards brought him food and water, and escorted him to a spotlessly clean toilet. They sometimes joked, he said, calling him Juma playfully.
On the fifth day, he said, another jailer appeared holding Mr. Schrier’s credit cards and demanding his PIN codes.
“In your country you have a saying: You are innocent until proven guilty,” Abdullah said. “Here we have the opposite. You are guilty until proven innocent. We do not know who you are.”
A Fellow American
Later that night the guards moved Mr. Schrier to a cell with many prisoners, including Alawite soldiers and officers he would eventually befriend.
In late January guards brought Mr. Schrier to a different cell. Inside, Mohammad said, was another American.
Mr. Schrier looked in and, he said, could not believe that the man was a Westerner. He was filthy, with a long unkempt beard. Mohammad told Mr. Schrier to move in and shut the door.
“Why do they have you?” Mr. Schrier asked. The man swore in English, and said he was accused of being in the C.I.A.
As the two grew acquainted, the man said young Syrians had invited him to rebel territory in 2012 but had handcuffed him after he crossed the border. He had been jailed, he said, following a secret Islamic trial in which he was not told the charges.
The man was terrified. He said Mohammad, who had not yet struck Mr. Schrier, often beat him.
Mr. Schrier suspected that his transfer meant that he would not be released. “I think they hadn’t let me see him because they hadn’t decided what to do with me,” he said. “But now it didn’t matter that I knew about him, because they had decided not to let me go.”
His lot was growing bleaker. His jailers discovered gouges on the cell door on Feb. 6. They tortured the two Americans as punishment and afterward beat him intermittently, he said. Sometimes they zapped him with a Taser.
His captors replied to his mother on Feb. 10. “Hi mom, sorry for not giving news before,” the e-mail read. “I’m working a lot here and having a lot of fun, think I’ll stay here for a while.”
As the weeks passed the captives were moved between makeshift jails, in and near Aleppo, and sometimes kept with more than 15 other prisoners. Defying the clichés of prison narratives, he said, his relationship with his cellmate soured and the two quarreled.
In March a Moroccan man who had lived in the United States was put in their cell, too. The man became abusive, Mr. Schrier said, taunting the Americans and once beating Mr. Schrier’s cellmate, bloodying his eye.
Mr. Schrier converted to Islam in March, he said, which improved his relations with the kidnappers and brought an added benefit: His jailers gave him something to read, an English-language Koran.
In April, he said, the prisoners were moved to a rural villa, also run by Mohammad, where a boy who appeared to be 12 was allowed to beat some of the prisoners and shock them with Tasers.
In May, he said, they were moved again, this time to a base run by Ahrar al-Sham, where an elder took an interest in their plight. He ordered them to give written statements about their torture by the Nusra Front, and said their cases would be re-examined and that they might be released.
Instead they were transferred to cells in two other bases, also run by Mohammad and the Nusra jailers. In mid-July, the jailers removed the Moroccan and later a dentist they had detained, leaving the Americans alone.
This allowed a fresh opportunity to try to escape. Their cell was in a basement; the mesh and welding on one window was damaged and had been only partially repaired.
Mr. Schrier said he stood on his cellmate’s back and unraveled wires, opening a hole large enough to fit his head and one arm. But he got stuck and had to return inside and rewire the mesh.
He and his cellmate argued over whether to try again. After a few days, he said, his cellmate agreed. Mr. Schrier opened a larger hole.
After the morning prayer, just before dawn, Mr. Schrier said, he pushed both arms out and followed with his head.
He passed through. He said he reached in, pulled his cellmate up. The man had a slightly heavier build than Mr. Schrier. He led with one arm, then his head, and stopped.
He was stuck. He slid back and tried leading with two hands. He was stuck again.
The street was silent, Mr. Schrier said. A light shone in their jailers’ first-floor office, directly above their cell.
His cellmate dropped back into the basement. Mr. Schrier said, “I’ll get help.”
His cellmate looked up, Mr. Schrier said, and told him, “All right, go.”
I didn't know anything about this until I just saw Matthew Schrier on 60 Minutes tonight. Don't you think it is odd that so many Americans are being held captive and even tortured in Syria, but there has been little or no publicity about it?
