JOSH BAKER: Before we begin I just want to flag there are some moments in this episode that you might find upsetting.
LISA SALLY: Dear Mom, all of my life I have filled with stupid decisions that had nothing to do with you and dad, I hope you and dad can forgive lifelong transgressions I’ve caused. When I’m having a stressful time I sing ‘You Are My Sunshine’ because it reminds me of you.
JOSH BAKER: Sam’s written to her parents from jail. It’s the first time Rick and Lisa have heard from her in years.
LISA: I’m not asking for anything but maybe after we get all this madness straightened out that we can visit. I love you, Sam.
BAKER: How do you guys feel?
LISA: It’s very heart wrenching to get a letter after such a long time, we miss our daughter. Thankfully she’s back and hopefully one day she’ll be able to come home.
BAKER: Rick that’s clearly upset you.
RICK SALLY: Yes it did. Because it’s my daughter….
BAKER: Do you feel sorry for your daughter?
RICK: No. I don’t feel sorry for my daughter, ‘cause the best I know she chose what she done but I’m glad she’s come back to face whatever she has to face.
BAKER: I’m Josh Baker and from BBC Panorama and Frontline PBS this is “I’m Not A Monster.”
Episode 9: “The rest be damned”
NEWSREEL: An Elkhart woman has pleaded guilty to helping terrorists. Samantha Elhassani admitted in federal court to providing money to ISIS. Elhassani known as Sam Sally locally...
BAKER: It’s November 2019, and without warning, Sam has just made a deal with federal prosecutors. In return for a limit on how long she could spend in prison — she’s pleaded guilty.
All that's left is for Sam to appear before a judge and be sentenced.
BAKER: You’ve spent years saying you are innocent — of everything.
SAM SALLY: Right. Right.
BAKER: You’ve just taken a deal — what happened?
SAM: Um, well what happened was that I was offered something I could live with, that would not take us to trial.
BAKER: Plea deals like the one Sam’s taken are the way the vast majority of federal cases in the U.S. are settled. So Sam’s pleaded guilty to providing financial support for terrorism. She admits that she took $30,000 of cash and gold out of the country and stashed it in safety deposit boxes in Hong Kong — knowing that Moussa and his brother would use it to join and support The Islamic State group.
And that she knew that the brothers wanted to join ISIS as far back as November 2014. That’s about four months before she left America.
But Sam’s deal has nothing to do with whether she was a member of ISIS — or a believer in their ideology. In fact, the government says they have no evidence she was. It's all about her life before she got to Syria.
BAKER: So you knew in 2014 that Moussa wanted to join ISIS, categorically?
SAM: Yes... I knew that he wanted to, I thought I had him talked out of it, I thought his family had him talked out of it as well.
BAKER: Then after that, although you think you’ve talked him out of it, you begin a process of smuggling tens of thousands of dollars and cash out of the country to Hong Kong. Making multiple trips…
SAM: Right.
BAKER: Yeah.
SAM: Right, yes
BAKER: So you have supported terrorism then?
SAM: Yep.
BAKER: What I want to know is: why did she risk her life and the lives of her children, to go along with Moussa’s plan to join a violent and brutal group of fanatics, if she didn’t even believe in what they were doing?
SAM: Before I even have to explain myself, most of the women I’m in here with already know what happened. Because any woman in an abusive relationship understands what I’m going through and what I went through. That was the only way in my mind I was going to be able to save my family; he would be gone, he would be dead and that was fine with me. If he wanted to die for the sake of these assholes that were hurting everybody around them. Well by all means, do it.
BAKER: Sam, the problem with that is, it means that you chose to take your children to Syria as a way of getting out of your marriage to your husband.
SAM: No, that’s not what I said. That’s not what I said Josh. I said I never intended on going to Syria.
BAKER: Sam appears to be saying she helped Moussa join ISIS so she could get out of an abusive relationship. And that she never intended to go to Syria herself. But, she says she couldn’t ask for help
SAM: For an abused woman that believes this man has reached beyond everything, absolutely no, that’s not an option, that’s not an option because, to me, he had reached me wherever.
BAKER: Sam has told me about how badly she was treated by Mousa in Syria. He was also violent towards his stepson Matthew and he raped and abused Suad, the young Iraqi girl.
But this is the first time Sam’s described their relationship in America as abusive. Before she’d said they had a great life together. I’ve seen videos of that time, and they seemed happy. Like when Moussa gave Matthew a new bike.
MOUSSA ELHASSANI: What do you think Matthew? Do you like it?
MATTHEW: Yeah!
SAM: You better give Moussa a big hug.
MATTHEW: Thank you so much!
MOUSSA: You’re welcome buddy, you’re my best friend.
BAKER: Although there was one video where Moussa was mocking Sam.
MOUSSA: And I want a drink and I want this and I want that and I’m pregnant and you be quiet. Be quiet. Be quiet.
BAKER: And friends and family have told me there were problems in their relationship. Including Sam’s best friend Andria.
ANDRIA: I don’t think he was physically abusive, I know that mentally and emotionally there was, I feel that there was abuse there.
BAKER: What kind of abuse are you talking?
ANDRIA: Just playing mind games with Sam. He had a way of making her… Playing on her self esteem, Sam would struggle with self esteem sometimes and if Moussa didn’t get his way he would play on that, put her down or, or make her feel insecure.
BAKER: Sam’s sister Lori also told me it was an abusive relationship.
BAKER: Did she ever say to you that she wanted to leave Moussa?
LORI: Sam did tell me that she wanted to leave him on multiple occasions. She actually moved in with me on a couple of occasions after he had physically abused her or he had slept with prostitutes or whatever…
BAKER: Moussa is still a bit of a mystery to me. Over the years I’ve been looking at this story, it’s been really hard to get a clear picture of him. But after I publish an article online about Sam, people who say they knew him start contacting me. Including some of his exes.
I want to see if they can help me understand more about the man Sam married.
AMBER: When we first met he was very like innocent you know, innocent and happy to be here, like just so excited to be here. He was so much fun, always laughing, always smiling.
BAKER: That’s Amber, Moussa’s ex-wife. She tells me they met shortly after he arrived from Morocco. In the three years they were together, she says Moussa treated her well. But things started to go wrong when he became obsessed by a sort of get-rich-quick scheme. This one:
ARCHIVE: The time has come to discover your potential… Imagine having the ability and power to explore new horizons…
AMBER: He seemed to start changing. He seemed to be more stressed out, more worried about making money and stuff like that. He was just chasing the American dream, I guess you could say, and just wanted that. And it kind of consumed him.
ARCHIVE: Now anyone can have a bridge to a brighter future, Choose your own path.
AMBER: I realized he was spending 1000s of dollars and not you know getting anything back...
ARCHIVE: Access your success.
AMBER: We would fight about it a little bit. You know, I was like this, it’s not real, you know, it's they this business, this company like sells you a dream life and it's not real like he’s buying into it too much.
BAKER: Amber says their fights over money escalated, and one time Moussa slapped her across the face.
AMBER: He backhanded me. It was so shocking to me.
BAKER: They broke up after that, and she says her last real contact with him was about a year later when he offered to pay her to pretend they were still married so he could stay in the U.S.
AMBER: Go to immigration with him and, you know, act like I was still his wife and everything like that. And I refused to. I absolutely, I said, ‘No, I said, I'm not. I don't want to get in trouble.’
BAKER: Another woman got in touch — Tabitha. She says she dated Moussa just before he got together with Sam.
TABITHA: He was super charming. Super cute, super handsome. Funny. And I remember staying up all hours of the night just having great conversations. And I mean, that's how easy it was. And that was in the beginning, like for the first several months of our relationship. I was just on cloud nine when I was with him.
BAKER: You said for the first several months — does that mean that changed?
TABITHA: Yeah. He just kind of disappeared. No warning. Just, he was gone. He wasn’t answering his phone and he moved out of the house that he was living at. He just packed up and left. And I was just like, what in the hell just happened? And I didn't hear from him for a good, I want to say, two, three months, maybe even more.
BAKER: Oh wow. And you guys were in a relationship at this point.
TABITHA: Yeah. Mhm. I was sad. You know, I was heartbroken. And then he came back, as if nothing happened, and behaved as if, you know, he just wanted to pick up where we left off. And the oddest thing, Josh, I had many questions. But his charm just made me not question him. I don't even know how to explain it to be honest. It was like he could just make you forget everything. And you can just move on as if nothing happened. And it wasn’t until I got away from the relationship that I noticed just how manipulative he really was.
BAKER: Tabitha’s never met Sam but she has her own theories about what happened.
BAKER: Can I ask, you've obviously been listening to the podcast so far. Do you think he could have convinced Sam to go along with his plan? Even though she didn't support ISIS it appears?
TABITHA: Absolutely. I mean, if she knew that they were going to Syria, I can tell you right now that I could believe that he convinced her to go in whatever way that happened. I find it totally believable.
BAKER: Really?
TABITHA: Yeah, I do. But there are parts of me that question. I mean, when… I don't know, for me, as a mom, if my kids were put in that type of situation, I would be doing everything I possibly could to get my babies out of there.
BAKER: It’s difficult to know exactly what goes on in any relationship. But how Moussa treated Sam is becoming a key consideration in her case. She still has to appear in court and be sentenced. And in court documents I can see that Sam’s defense team are focusing on the abuse she says she suffered.
Their case is all about why Sam did what she did, they say she was — and I quote — ‘a wife under the thumb of her violently abusive and radical husband.’
But the prosecution is focusing on what Sam did. They call her a key member of a conspiracy that resulted in her two young children living in war-torn Syria for nearly two years while her husband and brother-in-law fought under the ISIS flag.
The prosecution says Sam lied to family and friends to get there, and continues to tell a version of facts that doesn’t add up.
A judge is going to have to weigh these arguments and decide how long Sam should spend in prison. It could be anything up to 10 years.
BAKER: Can you talk me through what happens next? So you’ve accepted your plea deal, now what happens?
SAM: The prosecution will start their uh, sentence arguing. So they’re going to ask for the maximum and they are going to you know…
BAKER: I think it’s frozen.
BAKER: Yet again, a video call to Sam freezes at a crucial moment.
In March 2020, just before Sam’s sentencing, I’m at home in London, packing for a flight to America. I’m stuffing my gear into four huge duffle bags. And my taxi to the Airport is an hour away.
NEWSREEL: Let’s go straight to the Rose Garden, President Trump is about to hold a news conference on the coronavirus crisis…
BAKER: America suspends travel from the U.K.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Today I am officially declaring a national emergency. Two very big words….
BAKER: Sam’s sentencing is delayed again and again, until 8 months later when a date is finally set — November 9th.
I’m stuck in the U.K. But my producer Max lives in the U.S. and is able to make the hearing in Hammond, Indiana.
RICK: There you are.
MAX GREEN: Hey, how are you doing?
BAKER: The night before, he meets Sam’s father Rick who’s driven about nine hours across the country for his daughter’s day in court. Max tells me Rick’s wearing one of his signature shirts, with his name sewn into the breast.
RICK: These are my work shirts.
MAX: Josh told me about your shirts, he loves it. I told him I’d get him one that just says ‘Josh’ on it. Where are you comfortable? I want you to feel like you can take a seat…
RICK: Wherever you guys want to do it.
MAX: What are you feeling right now looking towards tomorrow morning? What’s going through your head?
RICK: Oh I am anxious but tomorrow it ought to be over. I know what I’d like to have happen and I’ve made a request if they give her time, like she’s going to have to go away that I get to spend maybe 20 minutes or half an hour with her before they take her away. And right now, you know, we can talk to her on the phone or video chat and that’s what we’ve been doing the last couple of years with her. Because she just called me tonight.
MAX: You spoke to Samantha tonight?
RICK: Yeah.
MAX: What was that conversation like?
RICK: We talk just about things that don’t mean anything and we laugh. We try to keep her spirits up and she’s in very good spirits. And she said, ‘Maybe I’ll be going home with you tomorrow, Dad.’ I said, ‘We have to see.’ That’s all I could say.
BAKER: The next day Max is in court. You can’t record inside so he runs out to his car to keep me updated.
MAX: Ok, so we’re on a break. I just stepped out of the courtroom. It’s gone on for a lot longer than I thought it would actually.
BAKER: Sam’s ex Juan, has been flown in by the prosecution and is the only witness to speak at the hearing.
MAX: So Juan testified against Sam on behalf of the government. There were a lot of instances where he would say, ‘I don’t want to give an opinion about that,’ but then at the next turn he would say, ‘Well, I do fully believe that Sam knew where she was going and, and had the choice and she chose to go to Syria.’ It’s the same things that he told you Josh when you spoke with him on the hunting trip.
BAKER: That was the elk hunt, where Juan told me he thought Sam had gone to Syria for the thrill of it. He also said he thought he’d never see their son, Matthew, again.
MAX: It’s worth noting too that on the defense side, you know, they’re citing a report from a, um a doctor, a psychologist I believe who’s evaluated Sam and that…
BAKER: The report describes domestic violence as a pattern of abusive behavior. Not just physical violence, but intimidation, coercion, isolation and manipulation. Things the defense say Moussa did to Sam.
MAX: And, and on that point I think it’s fascinating to hear the prosecution wrestle with that because they’re not saying that there wasn’t abuse or that Mousa didn’t influence her, they’re trying to, you know, see it with the degree of nuance that says she still had enough agency to make decisions that she could have made decisions differently.
BAKER: The prosecution say they’re not unsympathetic, but they want Sam’s claims to be viewed in context. They argue she had plenty of time to raise the alarm, and to protect her kids, and that she didn't. They also point out that Sam has credibility issues and tells stories that serve her personally.
MAX: We’ll be going back and, and what I expect is that they’ll basically be doing their final summations of their arguments.
BAKER: Before the judge makes his final decision he asks Sam if there is anything she would like to add. She stands up and addresses the court. Sam apologizes for what she has done — to Juan for letting Moussa come between him and his son, to her parents and to her FBI handler.
Then she says ‘I would like to ask for your forgiveness and mercy.’
The judge makes his decision. He sentences Sam to six and a half years in prison.
In his summary of the case, he says Sam committed very serious crimes and that what happened to her son Matthew in Syria is very troubling.
He also says, there's no question Sam was manipulated by her husband. And, I quote, ‘There's no conceivable way that this defendant would be sitting here today if it wasn't for Moussa.’
Rick leaves court, saying he needs some time before he’ll be ready to talk. He heads back to his hotel — alone.
The next day after years of trying to get an interview with either the FBI or the prosecution, the Assistant Attorney General for National Security, John Demers, agrees to talk to me.
He’s in the library at the Department of Justice in Washington, surrounded by leatherbound books.
BAKER: I’m so jealous I’m not there
JOHN DEMERS: [laughs] Is that your house, in an office or where are you?
BAKER: I’m in my living room, trying to conceal my cat’s toys behind a large plant.
DEMERS: I also see that romantic palm frond to the left of you... [laughs] Alright go ahead, please yeah.
BAKER: How would you characterise Samantha's role in the family’s journey towards ISIS? What part did she play in this?
DEMERS: Well she wasn’t the instigator in the sense that the idea was not hers, but she was a willing participant as her plea shows. She willingly assisted her husband in taking the money out of their accounts and she herself taking the money, willingly over to Hong Kong, travelling there with her two children to do that on two separate occasions and then going there on a third occasion to pick up the money with her husband when they were making the final move into Syria.
BAKER: Yesterday, in his closing remarks, the judge said that there was no question that she had been manipulated by her husband. Do you agree with that assessment?
DEMERS: Well not entirely, if she had never met and married Moussa Elhassani I don’t think that she would have ever done what she did. That said, I think she is personally responsible for her actions and that’s what we charged her with.
BAKER: While I’ve got an assistant attorney general for national security on the line, I take the chance to ask about what Sam was doing as an FBI informant. It’s classified, but maybe he’ll tell me something.
DEMERS: It was work as an informant related to the business where her husband worked which was a shipping business and to the clients and customers of that firm with respect to shipments that the FBI was interested in. But it wasn’t related to this investigation in any way.
BAKER: Did that work relate to matters of national security per se terrorism?
DEMERS: I can’t get into why the Bureau was interested in those individual shipments.
BAKER: Ok. I suppose my final question then would be, one of the big things that we’ve been trying to work out in the podcast series is, why Samantha made these choices and I’m just curious to know from your perspective if you’re able to shed any light on that?
DEMERS: Well I don’t know that, I don’t know that any of us know that. You know she has told multiple different stories of how she ended up in Syria and why she ended up in Syria. The fact remains, she did, the fact remains she took her children to Syria, the fact remains she bought slaves for her husband. So there are a lot of parts of this story where we’re not going to know the why to what she’s done. For our prosecutions, at the end of the day if she’s acting knowingly, she’s acting willingly, that doesn’t matter so much.
BAKER: I haven’t been able to interview Sam since she was sentenced. But there’s something else that came out in the case against her. Back in Syria, when I’d first found Sam, I’d asked her about the video of her son Matthew being forced to build a suicide bomb by Moussa.
MATTHEW: 700 of these metal balls, these steel metal balls, three kilos of TNT, dual metal plates.
BAKER: It was seeing this video that started me on this entire journey. What Sam didn't tell me was that she was the one behind the camera, filming Matthew.
MATTHEW: C4, cortex, fuse…
BAKER: How did you feel watching Matthew do that? Were you watching Matthew do that?
SAM: Yeah. Um, I was… It didn’t really matter to me, it didn’t really matter because I thought that was the end of it. If he could just be strong this little bit, if he could just be strong this little bit we would go home, that would be it.
BAKER: This video was sent to Lori as part of a cry for help from her sister Sam. I watched it with Lori as she began a desperate struggle to get the family home. After everything that’s happened, I want to know how she feels about Sam.
LORI: I’m angry about everything she’s done. I don’t think I can ever forgive her for anything she’s done. She was his mother. She was his protector. I would say that, you know, life isn't all about having fun, getting what you want when you want it. And that's kind of what's led to a lot of this is immediate gratification. I want what I want right now and the rest be damned. I think that Sam's desire for immediate gratification kept her with Moussa. I don't think that had anything to do with ISIS. He provided an immediate source of gratification: money, attention, what looked like stability, but really wasn't. All the things that she was craving.
BAKER: What is it you would like people to understand from all this or take away from it or…
LORI: I would like people to realize that Sam is not the victim here. The real victims are the children, the innocent people, the people in Syria who've had their lives ripped away from them.
BAKER: I remember, in the early days, you would tell me that it felt like you were living these parallel lives. One as a mom with kids, you know, trying to do your job. And the other as this sort of intermediary of trying to negotiate with a supposed people smuggler, and the pressure of everything was just really getting to you. Do you feel like that's eased now and you've got your life back?
LORI: I've accepted things I can't change and. You know, my life can't come to a stop or a standstill any further. You know, I feel like everybody's safe and kind of in a place where they can move forwards.
BAKER: For me there is no one reason why Sam went to Syria. No single tidy explanation. Do I think she was an ISIS ideologue? From everything I’ve heard, no. Did some of her choices mean she helped ISIS? Absolutely. And she clearly put her kids in danger and caused them harm. Do I think she was in an abusive relationship and this might have played a part in how she got to Syria? Yes. Do I think she has a desire for excitement and she might have been drawn to the thrill of her husband's plan? It’s possible. She could have wanted the adventure, but hated the reality.
Sam is complex, she can be both the manipulator and the manipulated. All of these seemingly contradictory things can be true with her. And it’s not for me to put Sam’s story neatly into a box.
And frankly, at this point, there are other people I want to hear from.
I’m driving along a dusty track that runs through a cornfield, heading to meet someone in what feels like the middle of nowhere. And again, all I've been given is a set of coordinates.
They take me to a narrow bridge over a wide creek. This is where I have been told to wait.
BAKER: This place is stunning. I don’t even know where I am like, a beautiful bank, by the riverside.
BAKER: In the distance I hear the sound of a motor boat. It’s Juan, coming to collect me. And on the boat with him, is the boy I set out to find.
BAKER: Guys, this is so cool!
BAKER: Matthew.
BAKER: Did you ever imagine after all that time you’d be back here?
MATTHEW: [laughs] No, I’ll be honest. I never did.
END
