The FRONTLINE Interviews

Theo Padnos

Journalist, Jabhat al-Nusra Captive

Theo Padnos is an American journalist and author who was held prisoner by Jabhat al-Nusra from 2012 to 2014. He is the author of Blindfold: A Memoir of Capture, Torture, and Enlightenment.

The following interview was conducted on March 10, 2021, by FRONTLINE filmmaker Martin Smith. It has been edited for clarity and length.

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Padnos’ Kidnapping

So tell me.You were taken in by a couple of guys that were — basically sold you to Ahrar al-Sham, a rival group of HTS [Hayat Tahrir al-Sham], or Jabhat al-Nusra, at that point.

I don't see things quite that way.From what I understand, I met some young men who introduced themselves to me as fixers for Western media people in Antakya, Turkey, in October of 2012.Now, they told me that they would take me across the border into Syria for free, and because I was, like, strapped for cash, I liked that sound of that number: free, zero.So I went with these people, and in fact, I escaped from them.They took me into custody within 24 hours of me being inside Syria.They put me in handcuffs.They told me they were from al-Tanzeem Al Qaeda, which is an Al Qaeda organization, and they said, "You killed our sheikh, bin Laden."And I thought, You people are just local rapscallions, dirtbags from the area, and I don't think you're Al Qaeda, but I can outsmart you.And in fact, during that night, they had me sleep handcuffed to one of the guys, and I was able to slip my hand out of the handcuffs and run away.

…I ran away to the Free Syrian Army detachment that was in Maarat Misrin.They were occupying the police station there.And I said: "Help me, help me, help me.I'm an American journalist."And they submitted me to trial, is what they did.They brought me to an Islamic court, the local Islamic court, and there the judge determined that I was an American spy and gave me back to my captors.Now, I don't know exactly how my captors then called up the local Al Qaeda chapter, but when the local Al Qaeda chapter turned up, it was clear that they were professional jihadis under the command of a guy who introduced himself as the international “spokesman” for Al Qaeda.

Can you give a name?

… That guy was [Abu] Muhammad [al-]Adnani.… He himself told me he was Syrian.I said, “The people who kidnapped me said that they were Al Qaeda.”He goes, "Who are they?"He was really angry, because he was like: "I'm the only one that's entitled to speak for Al Qaeda.Who are these dirtbags?You’ve got to bring them to me." …Anyway, in the custody of the real Al Qaeda people, that's when the real torture began for me. …

And Adnani was there, identifying himself as Jahbat al-Nusra?

No, he said he was the international spokesman for Al Qaeda, is what he said.

OK, but the Al Qaeda chapter in Syria at that time was Jahbat al-Nusra?

Yeah.In fact, he didn’t — that's true.And he wanted me to identify — he said, "Do you know who we are?"And they had been singing a lot of songs in my presence, and in the songs, they said [in Arabic], "Our leader is bin Laden," you know?"We took down the Trade Towers," they sang.[Singing in Arabic] "We destroyed America with civilian airplanes.We did it."So I'm listening to this stuff in the car, and then Adnani asked me later on, "Do you know who we are?"I'm like, "Al Qaeda?"So there was nothing missing.No, he did not declare, “We are Jahbat al-Nusra,” to me.

So he could have been — I mean, he would later be clearly a spokesperson for ISIS, correct?

Mm-hmm.

Jahbat al-Nusra

… When did you encounter somebody who identified themselves as Jahbat al-Nusra?

Months and months later.

… I’ll tell you one way that I knew that they were Jahbat al-Nusra is because as they were beating me — whack, "Who are we?"They say: "Who are we?We are Jahbat al-Nusra.Who are we?"And I had to respond, "Jahbat al-Nusra."And then, whack again: "Who are we?Jahbat al-Nusra."That's how you know that you’re with Jahbat al-Nusra.

And that happened some months after your initial capture?

… Yes, some months after.… I was captured in the fall; that happened in the spring, the following spring.

And when you were being beaten by guys that identified themselves as Jahbat al-Nusra, where were you?Did you know?

I was in the basement of a building in Aleppo. …

So were you aware at any point, or was it talked about among your guards, this rivalry that was developing between Jahbat al-Nusra and ISIS, or Islamic State in Iraq?

Of course, yes.

What did you hear?What were you learning?

Well, in the beginning, we heard that there was a minor faction of disgruntled Jahbat al-Nusra people that had broken off and begun a rival organization, and we thought nothing of it.But as time went by, I learned that this rival organization had taken over the oil fields near where I was being held, by that point in Deir al-Zour province, and that they were getting money from Iraq …and also that they were importuning Jahbat al-Nusra’s own soldiers and bribing them to defect from Jahbat al-Nusra and to come over to ISIS.

A war going on — eventually, a war broke out between Jahbat al-Nusra and ISIS, and some of the people who had been guarding me were killed by ISIS, so their friends told me.

… I also knew this because Jahbat al-Nusra began arresting fighters from ISIS and putting them in the cells next to me.So I would knock on the wall separating the two of us. I would say, "Sheikh, where are you from?"And he would say, "I'm from the State."And I would go, "From the Syrian state or the Islamic State?"“Come on, Islamic State."And I was like, "OK."So I knew where they were from, and then, you know, by the spring of 2014, everybody in my prison was an ISIS guy, so — and they filled me in on what had been happening between Jahbat al-Nusra and ISIS.

And which leaders from Jahbat al-Nusra did you encounter?

I mean, probably the most important leaders that I dealt with was the one guy named Abu Maria al-Qahtani.He was basically responsible for my kidnapping and for ransoming me away to Qatar.But there was another guy ...This other guy, who's still on Twitter all the time, his name, they called him Abu Hassan al-Kuwaiti.So these were the, I think, the bigwigs.There were some other bigwigs whose names I didn't catch.Eventually I ended up in a villa with, like, the top leadership of Jahbat al-Nusra and Al Qaeda in Syria, and they sat around all day philosophizing about the jihad and the future of their Islamic State.I didn't know all these people's names, but subsequently, when the FBI showed me pictures of well-known terrorists, I'm like, "Oh, that's that guy."

Right.

I knew they were well-known, well enough to turn up on the FBI's radar.

Did they tell you anything or did you learn anything about why they were splitting with ISIS and going to — or the Islamic State, let's say, why they were fighting the State, [Abu Bakr al-]Baghdadi's group?

Yeah.I mean, what I understood was that Jahbat al-Nusra had originally controlled an oil field called the Conoco oil field and also another one called the Omar Company, and they had been refusing to return the proceeds that they were getting from this oil back to Baghdadi in Iraq.In fact, they were trying to build their own Jahbat al-Nusra organization in Syria.And every once in a while, Baghdadi would call up his friend Qahtani in Syria and say: "Hey, listen, I sent you over to Syria with guns and money, and now you've taken the guns and the money, and now you have the oil well.Give me some guns and money and oil."And Qahtani said: "No, go away.Piss off."And that's how the hostilities broke out.That's what I understood from the ISIS guys themselves, by the way. …

So your fellow cellmates or the fellow prison mates told you about this?

They said it's all about money, and — which was funny, because at the time, when the ISIS guys would argue with the Jahbat al-Nusra men, they would have these deep theological arguments about what [inaudible] and philosophers from the 11th century had thought about Islam.And these would go on for hours and hours and hours.And then the Jahbat al-Nusra men would leave the room, and it would just be me and the ISIS guys, and I would say, "Sheesh, what was that all about?"And they go: "It's all about money.It's all about money.Like, Jahbat al-Nusra is taking all the cash, and we want — ISIS want more of that cash.”

… Your story sits well with what I learned when I was there.

Well, money is — it’s the mother's milk of the iihad.I hate to be corny, sort of cliche, but everything turns on money.And the moment that the commanders don't have cash to pay the gunmen beneath them, those gunmen are gone within the day.They need falafel to eat; they need gas to put in their trucks.Every few hours the trucks get flat tires.They can't fix the flat tires and move around and shoot people if they don't have cash.You know, they really need the cash.And there's no employment; there's nowhere to get legitimate money.They've either got to sell hostages or sell oil.So it's a constant struggle for cash, and we are all in danger because they need cash so much, because we have no value to them.

Torture by Jahbat al-Nusra

Were you aware of other Americans that were being held by them?

Well, I had one cellmate called Matt Schrier, who was an American journalist from Long Island.And they told us that — they mentioned — told me yes, that ISIS had other Americans and that the Americans — …

So that's two American prisoners.And tell me about the beatings and torture the Jahbat al-Nusra inflicted on you, if you can.

I mean, for the first month that I was a prisoner of Jahbat al-Nusra, I would be asked to lie on the floor and to keep my face to the wall when they entered the room.The first thing they did when they entered the room was they would kick me in the side, like really, really hard, so that I had to roll over.Then they would kick the other side.And then they would say that — my face would be exposed, and they would say, "Put your face to the wall."They would do this every day such that I felt like I had — my ribs were broken, and after a while, I was trying to protect my body, but I couldn't protect it anymore.I just let them do this to me.It just goes on forever.You don't know when it's going to stop; you don't know why they're doing this to you.

What was the purpose of that, do you think?

I think the purpose of it all is because they believe that everybody in their custody, everybody under their control, has been living in — has been serving the wrong god basically, and my god was avarice and greed and the lust for fame.And they accused me of this all the time.So they wanted me to renounce that person that I had been, which, by the way, you do eventually, in those prison cells.I didn't want to go back to whatever I had been before, because it had gotten me in trouble.I was ready; I was open for whatever they had to propose to me.I mean, I think the real purpose of that deprivation of orientation in space and time and the pain, the violence, is to cause you to rethink your entire existence.Who have I been, and what do I want to be in the future?And eventually they offer you, “If you read this book, you'll be our brother.”And most of the prisoners did this.Most of the prisoners converted.

Did you?

No, I did not convert.I did not convert because I felt that this was the last card that I had to play to save my life.If they had the gun at my head and they were saying, "Islam or die?," I would've said, “Muslim,” no problem, but I wasn't going to give them that card until they actually had the gun on my head.It never came to that.

You were smart.And I'm glad you're here.So that was the principal form of torture that they subjected you to?

No, the principal — that was like an informal kind of, just, abuse is what it was.

That was the daily treatment?

That was just the daily abuse.No, but especially in the first three months, when I was by myself in the eye hospital in Aleppo, late at night, they came into my cell, I think three times, and they had me blind myself, and then they’d handcuff me behind my back.Then they’d lead me down to the torture room, where they interrogate their prisoners.Interrogation is just torture.They locked me into a used tire, and then they flipped me onto my face, so that I was resting my face on the cement floor.My feet and hands — my hands were behind my back, my feet were in the air, and then they just clobbered me until I could not scream anymore.And this takes a long time to just beat all the physical strength out of you so you can't scream anymore.

And then they would take me back to my cell, and they would say, "You lied to us during this interrogation."They would ask me questions as they were beating me.I confessed everything, by the way, during those interrogations.I confessed to, like, having a role and being a CIA agent in Syria and having previously spied on behalf of the CIA in Yemen.… I told them whatever they wanted to hear.Anyway, at the end of these sessions, the chief interrogator would tell me: “You lied to us so much, you Christian, you liar.Tomorrow night is going to be worse.”

And so for me, the worst part of the torture was waiting for them to come get me the next time, because I really didn't think I could survive.I felt it was a miracle I had survived the first time, but I did not think that I was going to make it through.And I also thought that they wanted to kill me under torture, because they were telling me that this was what they were going to do."We will kill you under torture."So, you know, what does one do under those circumstances?One questions one's entire existence."What have I done to get myself into this position?And how can I make myself right with these people?And how can I get out of this situation?"

In my case, I was like, I know I can’t do the torture again, and I know I have to — I mean, I tried to basically end my own life in my cell, you know, which is a place of humiliation and self-hatred that they bring all of their prisoners to.Anyway, they brought me to that place, and the only reason why I'm here today is because I didn't have a gun; I didn't have cyanide.I didn't have any effective way to actually kill myself.I had this stupid blindfold.

You tried to hang yourself on a doorknob with a blindfold?But it didn't work?

You know, I tried my best.I tried all night long, because they told me they were coming in the morning.Of course they don't come in the morning.You know, they want you to live in that terror for a long time, so they came maybe a week later, and — even six months after these first episodes of torture happened, they came into my cell six months later and they stuffed a gag in my mouth, blindfolded me again.This time they strapped, like, chains around my ankles and strung me up from a rafter so that I was hanging upside down.This was six months after I had confessed everything to them.… And even then, they were still beating me, and I did not know why, and I didn't — I didn't know how to pacify these people or appease them or — I just didn't know.I couldn't understand what they were about.

There was nothing you could confess to that would satisfy them.

No, I confessed everything.I said, “Tell me what you want me to say, and I'll say it.”I really think that the general purpose of all of this is to cause you to renounce your previous existence, which is a worldly existence.Did you — did you lead a life of searching for money?Well, yes, I did.Did you go off and try to have girlfriends?Well, yes, I did.Did you — were you at all interested in God?No, not particularly.And when you are waiting for those torturers to come, you begin to question, Have I lived my life correctly?And, you know, when they come to you and they say, "You can come into the light; you can be one of us and just accept this book," well, most people are going to say, “OK.”

… Abu Maria al-Qahtani comes to visit you.We know he's the commander of Jahbat al-Nusra, or today Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.Describe that encounter with him.

The first time I met him was in November of 2013, and he came with a cameraman, and the cameraman filmed our encounter, which is probably on some ISIS computer — some Jahbat al-Nusra computer somewhere.He gave me a long speech about all the crimes that the U.S. government had committed in Iraq and in Syria and throughout the Muslim world.And he told me, “We're not going to hold you responsible for this because you're just a journalist, and in fact, what we're going to do, because we're nice people, is we're going to arrange a prisoner exchange, and you'll be free in a few weeks.”He spoke like this for 40 minutes, and then he got up and left.And I didn't see him again for another six months.

But he was filming this?

He was filming this, yeah.

And there's one videotape that I've seen in the film about you, the documentary about your ordeal.Was that the only videotape, hostage video?

There's 13, 14 separate movies, official movies.And then people filmed me all the time.… So they would come into my cell and ask me questions and film me.But there were also official hostage videos that I made where I said — they asked me to say my name, what my profession was, who my parents were, and why I had come to Syria, who my employers were.I made a video in an orange jumpsuit in the spring of 2013.A year before they put James Foley in the orange jumpsuit, I was in a jumpsuit, confessing to being a CIA guy. …

So you met Abu Maria al-Qahtani that one time.He spent 40 minutes; he told you that there was going to be a prisoner exchange.He was giving you some pretty good news that you were going to be let free.And he met with you several other times?

Well, no.In November of 2013, he appeared in my prison and asked me to come, and I was removed from my cell, and I sat in the guard's room with him, and we chatted, and we were filmed.And I didn't see him again until August of the following year, when he came to a different prison and said, "Soon we're going to be taking you across the desert.”We were in Deir al-Zour at the time.He said, “We're going to be taking you across the desert into southern Syria to a city called Deraa, and you're going to come with us, and you'll be protected."

Right.And then your release came soon after that, where you were released to the United Nations in the Golan Heights.

That's right, relatively soon after that.We traveled through the desert for about two or three weeks, and a month after this meeting in the summer of 2014, yes, I was released.

And when you — just to order of detail, where were you, do you think, when you sat in the guard room and had that first meeting with Abu Maria al-Qahtani?

Where was I? I was in the city of Mayadin, in the Euphrates valley, in eastern Syria.

Right, OK.When was the first time you heard the name Abu Mohammad al-Jolani?

When he was interviewed on Al Jazeera.I'm pretty sure that was when — yeah, I was in a prison in, I think I was in this Mayadin prison, and I remember it was cold, so it was probably the winter of 2013, ’14, around there.He had been — all the guards were outside watching their leader being interviewed on Al Jazeera, and I'm like, "Well, I wonder what any of those media people were asking Jolani about their American prisoner."But on that occasion, perhaps they didn't know, but it seemed odd to me that they wouldn't know about the archipelago of prisons that Jahbat al-Nusra operates and operated at the time.

… I wanted the media people to ask Jolani these questions, and instead they were asking strategic questions."Do you intend to attack the regime from the left flank or the right flank?,” or, “What are your demands?”And I’m like, how do you treat your own people?These were his own — these were civilians within areas that Jahbat al-Nusra controlled that they arrested.

And this was an Al Jazeera interview, and it was a quite friendly interview?

Of course.

... Your captors, some of them would have been imprisoned in Iraq, I assume.

Yeah, they were.

Did any of them talk about that, their experience and where?

Yeah.Not only my captors, but also my fellow ISIS prisoners that were in the prison with me, yeah, they told me about the American prisons that they were in.Qahtani was a prisoner, so he told me about his time with the Americans.I felt that some portion of the rage that these people had developed against Americans was because of the treatment that the American soldiers have given them during their time in American prisons.And I told them this, like, "I don't see what business America had coming into your country” — I’m speaking to Qahtani, an Iraqi —“and the rest of you and putting you in one of their prisons."It seemed — I just — I don't see the logic of that, and he was taking it out on me, but —

… What did you learn about the ideological difference between the Islamic State, later to be ISIS, and Jahbat al-Nusra?

I learned that there is none.I really don't believe that there is the slightest iota of difference.And they themselves, the ISIS men and the Jahbat al-Nusra men, will tell you that they believe in the exact same things.They just are loyal to different commanders.I know that the jihadologists make a big deal of the alleged differences between these two groups, but the truth is that, oftentimes, the members of this group come from the same family.One brother is in Jahbat al-Nusra; another brother is in ISIS.In fact, I was in prison at one point with a pair of brothers.They were both with Jahbat al-Nusra, but they had been accused of wishing to defect to ISIS.They're just the same people, and they switch back and forth, according to where the money is and where their own commanders are, where their personal sense of loyalty lies.It's not an ideological issue between the two.

Abu Mohammad al-Jolani

… So in my interview with Jolani, I asked him about you.

Yeah.Thank you.

Well, you're not going to like the answer he gave me particularly.His answer was, "Who is Theo?"

Yeah, I believe that.… Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, he was in charge of Aleppo and Idlib.So I think that they had two separate command structures, and the guys went back and forth.The lower-down guys went back and forth in between the two groups, but they kept their secrets from one another, and I don't think that when Abu Maria got 11 million euros in ransom for me, he ran off to Jolani and said, "Here's some of the money that’s coming to you.”I doubt it.

Well, fair enough that perhaps, given the division in the command structure and the general chaos of those early days, before Jolani really controlled Idlib in the way that he does, having defeated his rivals, it's possible to believe that back then he didn't hear about you.But now there's been a documentary; you've written a book; you've received all sorts of coverage in major newspapers around the world —

I’ve been on Al Jazeera.That gets through to them.

A lot of this gets through to them.Jolani is not unsophisticated, so it's impossible really to believe that he hasn't heard of you.

Of course he has by now, yes.

But he says: "Who is Theo?I don't know who he is."

Yeah.No, that doesn't seem altogether credible.He was aware that Abu Maria al-Qahtani held American hostages, that one of them escaped and that the other one was ransomed out by Qatar.Long before you asked him these questions, he knew those details.

… This is what he said: "Who is Theo?I don't know who he is."Then I explained who you were, and he said: "We never had American prisoners in the first place, not during the Nusra time or even now.This is the first time I hear about it."

Yeah.I mean, he's lying, but what do you expect from a terrorist leader who's not only — I don't care what he says about me, but he intends to kidnap Americans in the future, because it's such a useful revenue stream for them.

… He says they could have been gangsters operating and using the Nusra name.

Yes, I mean, the Earth could be flat.The sun could rise in the West.

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