#492： How to Survive a Secret Syrian Terrorist Prison
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Summary
Matt Schreier is on his way home from Syria after spending months photographing the war going on there. When he was taken prisoner by the al-Nasura Front, a branch of al-Qaeda in Syria. For the next seven months, he was starved and tortured in six different prison camps. Yet, he survived becoming the first westerner to escape al-Qaeda. Today, he talks to the military about what he learned through his experience.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
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matthew schreier is on his way home from syria after spending months photographing the war going
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on there when just 45 minutes from the safety of the turkish border he was taken prisoner by
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the al-Nasura front a branch of al-qaeda in syria the next seven months he was starved and tortured
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in six different prison camps yet he survived becoming the first westerner to escape al-qaeda
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today he talks to the military about what he learned through his experience today on the show
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i talked to matt about his book the dawn prayer which details what he learned about how to survive
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a syrian terrorist prison as well as the lessons he learned and what not to do from a fellow american
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with whom he was held captive after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash dawn prayer
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matt schreier welcome to the show thank you for having me so you just came out the book the dawn
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prayer or how to survive in a secret syrian terrorist prison you were the first westerner to escape al-qaeda
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from syria it's an incredible story before we get to how you got captured to the the escape what were
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you doing in syria in 2012 because you're not a military guy no i'm not i was there to do freelance
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photography i was there about a month before visiting the refugee camps i was in southern turkey i went into
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syria for the first time to azaz and then from there it was jordan where the zatari camp was at the time
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where still is it was probably 150 000 people there and i mean what was crazy i mean so this is
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not too long ago but the syrian conflict it's as i was reading the book i was reminded how
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complex the conflict is for those who aren't familiar with it like what was going on in syria
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at the time and it's still going on today it's always been complex it's even more complex now because
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of how many additional players have come to the table but back then i got there in late 2012
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and at the time you basically had the syrian government fighting the free syrian army and
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other factions like the al-Nosar front who was who were the guys that captured me and a lot of other
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splinter groups and at the time the fsa was the main fighting force the biggest one and they were
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kicking ass back then they were pretty much controlling 85 percent of aleppo which is where i
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was and people were defecting left and right and it looked it looked pretty good for them look like
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they were going to win any day now but since the government had an air force that's what prevented
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them from actually being able to overwhelm them and actually take take over the country so uh
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in the months that followed that's when you saw like a real rise in the extreme groups
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with uh isis and mostly al-Nosar who had me in 2013 so i mean this what it would sound it's
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interesting it's like there's like a mixture of like good guys and bad guys bad guys who could
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be good guys good guys who are also bad guys is that kind of what it was like it was just very fluid
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yeah i i mean depending on depending on how you define a bad guy pretty much everyone's a bad guy
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if you look at the term like everybody tortures everybody over there that's just a basic
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common interrogation practice i mean there's no group over there that doesn't torture people so
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i mean if you think torture is bad then everybody's bad but then you have to examine what they're
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fighting for and that's how you can kind of distinguish how bad they are like the free syrian
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army where they you know they were basically normal guys fighting for freedom they wanted to
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you know be able to smoke cigarettes in public and which they can do now under the government but
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after after they won as opposed to you know the is the islamists who wanted to you know make
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smoking illegal and alcohol illegal they just wanted freedom the free syrian army guys their
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problem was is that they relied too strongly on the extremists to fight a lot of the battles and
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before they knew it the tail was wagging the dog in that aspect all right so you're here in syria
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it's 2012 there's these battles going on different groups are are there you were about to leave
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you're you were planning to leave december 31st 2012 that was your last day in syria
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but then plans changed what happened there i was about 45 minutes from the turkish border on my way home
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and that's when i got rolled up basically the cab was just cruising down the street
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and uh silver jeep cherry came from the oncoming lane blocked off the road i thought we just averted
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an accident so for the first second or two i like smiled and like whoa and then the doors opened then
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the terrorists got out and my smile disappeared they were armed to the teeth guy in the front seat was
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cloaked had the toe in black he had an ak guy in the back seat had a chrome 45 i think it was and
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they just took me from the van uh the van took me from the cab put me in the back seat of the
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cherokee very gently no yelling no hitting and second later after they pulled my cap over my eyes
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we were moving the whole thing probably took a minute i mean and when you were when that happened
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like what was going through your mind like were you just like panicked or it happened so fast you
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couldn't even feel anything pretty pretty much the second i was just in shot i was in shock it's called
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capture shock uh when the door just opened and i saw the guy in jet black you know just like in a
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movie jumps out with his ak and i just like froze and just watched him come over to me open the door
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and he probably saw the look on my face he just grabbed me by my arm very gently took me out of
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the cab led me over to the cherokee placed me in the back seat got in after me and closed the door
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second later he pulled my ski cap because it gets cold in syria over my eyes and he leaned me forward
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and just pressed the barrel the ak to my temple second later we were moving and at this point
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you still didn't know who captured right you still didn't know who who captured you no not yet i mean
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i had a feeling who who it was because you know this is all before the rise of isis at this time
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al-nusra front were the number one bad guys in the country like the guys you didn't want to be taken by
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isis was nobody even heard of them at this point they were not really a heavy presence yet so i kind of
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figured it was them but i wasn't sure so the whole way to the first jail i just i didn't say a word i just
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kept my hands up my mouth shut and just said to myself all right what are you going to do what are you
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going to say when you get to wherever you're going because obviously you know you're going to be
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questioned so i i just kind of thought about what i was going to say and you know i i've been in
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country for like 18 days before that so i knew a lot of high level pre-syrian army commanders
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commanders that whose names i could throw around and you know traditionally in arab culture
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a lot of wars before this if this happened then you said all right look i was with sheik modar and
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general hassoon and they contacted those guys they would turn you over to them if they asked and if
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they did contact those guys i knew that they would say all right look give them to me so i knew i had a
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chance so i just tried to stay positive and focus on how to make that happen yeah i thought this
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interesting immediately like okay you had the shock of being captured but then the shock wore off you
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immediately came up with the plan to ensure that you stayed alive and two got released you had the
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plan okay drop these names possibly if it worked but like staying alive like you i don't know immediately
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got to the idea that like i need to make these people like me if i want to stay alive and so how did
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you go about making these guys who you still didn't know who were they could have been terrorists
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islamic terrorists or how'd you plan to like make these guys like you and cross those cultural barriers
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it was you know by that by the time i started thinking like that i was uh at the jail already in the
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basement so i just had a couple of minutes they gave me a hot glass of tea and over the tea i was
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like all right you know what's the main question you want to ask yourself is how do i avoid avoid
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being tortured so you have to make them like you so i said how do you make somebody like you who
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you know hates you you make them laugh i mean it's just human instinct i mean nobody doesn't
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like the guy who makes them laugh so uh i just kind of formulated that strategy and uh and i went
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with it and in regards to like knowing what they would laugh at i didn't know what they would laugh
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at you never know but i spent enough time on the front lines with the fsa guys who some of them were
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pretty hardcore religious and you know they loved my sense of humor so i just kind of you know went off of
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that you know experience and you know it worked yeah that was funny i mean some of these guys even
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though they were you know probably not fans of america like they a lot of them were steeped in
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american culture so you could make references to american pop culture from like 20 years ago or 15
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years ago and they would get it sometimes and when they didn't get it you know it's like all right you
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could just kind of laugh at them inside your head because you know they don't know what you're talking
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about and you're kind of mocking them but in terms of like fashion like they love american
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clothes these guys that's one of the reasons why you know they they like me as as funny as that
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sounds because you know they took my bag when i was captured and you know you see guys walking into
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the uh shop they later later wearing timberland cargos and you know what i was wearing the guys
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would come in the show and they constantly like hey how much was that how much were those pants how
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much was that vest how much was that hoodie they they love american clothes so uh that was something
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that i that i was a little surprised at and a lot of these guys you described like they're young
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like some of them are like 18 19 early 20s like they're not 30 or 40 years old right right i mean
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this is a it's not what we're used to seeing in you know the videos from afghanistan where it's like
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you know these old tribal guys these guys were you know mostly uh veterans from iraq you know
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so they're in their 20s and 30s a lot of a lot of the fighters and you know kids and their teens
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who look up to them are are joining left and right so that the the group that had me most of
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the you know like general muhammad who was like the main man or became the main man he was you know
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i think he was like around 32 and the emir was around the same age as him so they were really young
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guys and so besides trying to make these guys like you another thing you picked up really quick is
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that and you you seem to understand intuitively is that you had to also assert yourself the same time
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as well you had to show you couldn't be pushed around like how did you know that that also would
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work too to sort of gain respect i wouldn't phrase it like that because you know if i carried myself
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like you know like i'm not a man to be pushed around they would easily show me you know how
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insignificant i was you know this is their backyard their country their house i just tried to act like
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you know i wasn't scared so you know to kind of you know you're in a very harsh environment with
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the harshest of people so if you show me up balls you know they'll they'll respect that but as far as
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you know taking it further than that like you know like you know i'm not i'm i'm not a man to be
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reckoned with i didn't take it that far because you know you have to well well earning respect you have
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to show respect so it's everything right so when they captured you they started questioning you like
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who are you why you're here and you're like i'm a photographer why didn't they believe you why
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did they release me you showed them the pictures you've been taking like who did they think you
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were and why did they think it was important to keep you held hostage i i actually didn't get a
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chance to show them the pictures they uploaded them later after the interrogation but uh i mean they
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they had information that they said they have information that there's cia
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operatives in the area which you know they probably did but you know to them any western area is a
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potential cia agent they think anybody who has an iphone is a cia agent you know which is ridiculous
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since you know most of those guys collect and they all carry blackberries but they don't know this
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so uh it's just because i'm american i'm a white guy you know i have to be a potential cia agent they
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have to grab me and investigate me and at that time you know they were just basically doing that to any
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westerner that they came across they were asking me if i knew where any other journalists were and i did
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because i met several in uh southern turkey but yeah i'm not gonna help them create a situation where
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other people are in my my situation so uh it's just a very simple way of thinking so the first few
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months they held you in a hospital what were the conditions like there in this place the conditions
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were i mean for me they weren't that bad because i i kind of connected with general muhammad in our
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interrogation and he he liked me so nobody touched me nobody you know embarrassed me or or mistreated
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me in any way they fed me all right they took me to the bathroom i could knock on the door
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whenever i wanted something it was not that bad for me personally for other people you know you hear
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them torturing the hell out of guys right up the hallway for hours on end sometimes you know
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the different screams obviously they're not the same guy for hours but you hear people being shot
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outside or i mean you know you hear the gunshots so you and it's a court that i found out so you
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know you know a lot of these are probably sentences being carried out but for me personally the first
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month and five days wasn't that bad as ridiculous as that might might sound because they were
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being nice to me and respectful who are your fellow prisoners in in this in this hospital at first
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five days in i started making and making a lot of noise to convince them that i wasn't a cia agent so
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they shut me up they put me in a new cell with 18 regime pow's uh these are soldiers that fight for
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the government and uh they're mostly alawi which is uh shia sect and uh the sunnis hate them that's
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so they threw me in with these guys um for five days and they were like the best guys i ever met
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in my life they welcomed me and i was shocked they welcomed me into their little world we ate together
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we exercised you know played games when the lights were on and it was really refreshing unfortunately
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five days in they threw about 13 shabihah those are like militants who fight for the regime and they
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they hate those guys they consider them traitors to the revolution so uh because the cell was so
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overcrowded they moved me back to solitary for 13 days and then after 13 days that's when they
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put me in a room with another american who basically had the opposite effect as the syrian soldiers who
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were like my my boys this guy turned out to be you know a nightmare on top of a nightmare
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well which is surprising because you think oh an american compatriot i can relate to this guy
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i think that'd be a welcome change like what made this guy a nightmare for you i mean where to begin
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like i described in the book he was basically the equivalent to journalists of what gomer pile was
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to marines in full metal jacket i mean the guy he just couldn't do anything right he would just
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constantly piss off the guards without even trying and on top of that like the thing that the
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precipitated incident was you know right after i was thrown in the cell he told me that he was in
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the country to write a story about austin tice who was the first journalist to go missing and he's
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still missing and when i found out that you know that's why he was there and he said that he was you
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know the whole point of him being there was to make money off this story you know it kind of rubbed
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me the wrong way because that's like saying you know i was in country to do a story about somebody
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in the same position as you and get paid off of it so it kind of just like rubbed me the wrong way
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and the more time that went by you know the more disloyal he seemed to be like he told me he would
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shoot me in the head if they'd let him go because this is war and that's what you have to do to survive
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which is ridiculous you know as americans we you know we're kind of raised with values and yeah you
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stand side by side with the guy next to you in a war zone even if you don't like him and meanwhile the
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guy who i'm locked in a room with is telling me no man i i'd actually shoot you in the head if you
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let me go so you know these things kind of snowballed very quickly to the point where uh
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you know i just i just couldn't stand him yeah i mean i thought that was like no one liked him like
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there was absolutely no one like you didn't like the prisoners didn't like and the guards didn't like
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them i think we've all met people like that where they're just their personality just rubs
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everyone the wrong way yeah i think we've all met them and we can all agree that they're always the
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person who thinks they're the smartest one in the room and that was his problem you know like he uh
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he thinks because he has a phd that he's like some kind of genius but at the same time he was homeless
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when he got abducted he never admitted this to me he admitted it after he came home in an interview
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and it's it's just like you know you're you're a homeless guy with a phd and to me that's worse than
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being like a crackhead who's homeless because at least the crackhead has an excuse he's crackhead
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yeah what's the guy with a phd like what's your excuse for being homeless so he was just like
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this incredibly pompous guy who like i said he would just nobody liked him the guards would come
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in the room to sell they take us to the bathroom they'd be totally cool just mellow and then all
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of a sudden you hear them screaming and yelling and i just look at him and i'm like what are they
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you know what are they doing what would you do and he's like my ass crack was showing and it's just
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like yeah that's in islam that's a sin and you can't show between your knees and your belly button
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and it would drive them nuts like they would start getting extremely violent and hostile and i'm just
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like you know like you're 44 years old i gotta tell you to pull your pants up you know and it's
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happened like several times where you're like there you gotta pull your pants up come on buddy
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and it was just like constantly you know incidents like this or like the part of the book where they
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they throw water down on the floor they they throw a bunch of water down on the floor in our cell tell
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us to scrub it and squeegee it out and he leaves this gigantic puddle in the middle of the floor because
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he can't even squeegee your room right and it's like you know 40 degrees in the room so it's not going
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to dry and we have to live like this until you know basically a week later when they do it again
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and we get to we have to squeegee it out and it was it was just a nightmare just from beginning to end
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yeah that's a big hamper on morale for you we're gonna take a quick break for your word from our
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sponsors and now back to the show so i mean during this time when you guys the first time you were
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together like you you all tried to like sort of hatching an escape plan right yeah about two weeks
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in i decided like i i can't be in a room with this guy anymore he was the motivator of me wanting to
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escape it had nothing to do with getting away without time i wanted to get away from him and uh i was just
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like all right i gotta plan something so uh he it will one night i'm just staring at the door and it's
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just a wood panel door holding us in you know they lock it with a key and they leave the key inside
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and you know wood panel door obviously has these the panel parts where where it gets thin and the
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wood was really really thin where the panels were maybe like you know a centimeter and i'm looking at
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the thick part of the wood and there's like this giant silver dollar size impression that somebody
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carved into the door so one night i'm just staring at it and just matter of factly i'm like yeah how'd
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that mark it in the door and he's like i put it there and i'm like why he's like i was bored
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and uh what'd you use he's like i used a spoon and uh later on he admitted that he was trying to
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make make a peephole in the middle of the door you know because i guess they you know wouldn't know
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what that is it's only the size of a silver dollar and i said all right well if you could do this with
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a spoon we can we can work here so the next few days like i stole a three inch flathead brass screw
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from the bathroom and a few days after that i stole a flat bracket that fit perfectly into the head
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of the screw and i put it through the top uh right corner of the panel in the bottom of the door which
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is about the size and width of a milk crate in and out in less than five minutes you know barely
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stripped the screw and uh now we had a real peephole that they wouldn't see you know you can only see
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their sneakers so uh you could tell who was out there and my plan was simple we just perforate all
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around the sides of this panel and wait for an opportunity to kick it out in one shot so it's not
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there's not a lot of noise and we run for it he refused to follow that plan he said no i'm not doing
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that you know uh let's let's you know basically put the perforate all around the doorknob where the
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wood is like three inches thick you know it just wasn't possible and then we'll punch that out and turn
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the key like ridiculous like like totally impossible and uh he refused to do my plan so i said all right
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you know because i was just not thinking clearly and i knew that it wasn't going to work so he would
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have to go back to my plan but within two hours obviously you know the uh bracket was stripping the
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screw right away which is bad because we don't have like a lot of screws to keep going with when my
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plan comes to fruition again but unfortunately general muhammad heard the bracket stripped the screw
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and made a click sound and then boom he busted in with a couple of thugs started searching the door
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and kind of funny because it's like you know you expect him to find the mark that i made but he
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didn't because i stayed along the steel plate to hide it that surrounded the doorknob now his flashlight
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falls on this giant impression that my brilliant cellmate put there before i even entered the cell
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and he thought that that's what i was doing so uh he got a little upset and the result was he took
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our beds and tortured the hell out of us and transferred us to a new prison which was basically
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the beginning of the darkest stage of my captivity and this is when things like the the they weren't
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being nice anymore this is when things got ugly no yeah i mean it changed within as soon as he saw
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that mark that my cellmate put in the door he called me over and he looked at me and usually general
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muhammad was like he's like this really fascinating character in the book because you're used to just
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seeing these dark evil terrorists with no sense of humor and no personality he was the opposite like
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he was a very charismatic very funny leader that that just his men loved and i i actually enjoyed
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talking to him when he would come in the south because he was such a cool guy when he was around me
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but as soon as he saw that i was trying to escape even though it was a completely different mark in
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the door like this darkness came over his eyes and i saw the other half that theo told me about my
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cellmate because he hated theo he hated him and uh he told me about you know things that he did to him
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before i entered the cell which weren't pleasant and i saw this look come over his eyes and i was just
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like okay i'm about to meet that guy and uh he was not as pleasant as the one i'd been used to
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what kind of torturing techniques do these guys use on you guys on me basically what they do is
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they take a tire a car tire and they force it around your knees when when you're sitting on the
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floor so your knees are bent up to your chin and they force a car tire over it and then they take a
00:23:45.640
steel rod or an iron rod and they slide it over the tire but under your knees in the crook and what
00:23:51.560
that does is it locks into place so now you can't bend your knees and you're handcuffed excuse me
00:23:57.460
you're handcuffed so they flip you over and you're on your face with your feet in the air and then
00:24:01.740
they take this very thick cable about as thick as a nightstick and they start whacking the bottoms of
00:24:07.540
your feet with it and let me tell you something it hurts i mean whenever you see it on tv or the
00:24:16.580
movies they always use like these thin wooden sticks or paddles almost and it doesn't really look that
00:24:23.680
painful but uh trust me man it is hell and if they really don't like you what they do is they'll
00:24:31.960
strike the sides of your feet and they'll hit your ankles um they didn't do that to me on this occasion
00:24:36.920
they did it to my stomach because he was his ankles were bleeding all over the floor when he got back
00:24:41.600
but that that's what they did on this occasion um there were other prisoners that you would hear
00:24:45.960
stories about that they would hang from pipes by handcuffs one guy they bit his ear off they used
00:24:53.420
high voltage tasers uh i took i took some bolts here and there later on but uh in the hospital that
00:24:59.980
was the main method of of torture yeah well i think i wrote sent you an email before the interview like
00:25:06.440
i was like i physically went like you're just describing right now i started getting heebie-jeebies
00:25:10.200
thinking about getting your feet hit with that cable oh geez yeah and it and it's and the environment
00:25:16.640
where they choose to do it makes it even worse because they bring you into the boiler room
00:25:20.460
and you know there's a reason why west craven chose the boiler room for a nightmare on elm street it's
00:25:26.440
just like the scariest room in any building you know what i mean it's like you know and you got
00:25:31.800
bloodstains all over the floor and it's just like one single bulb hanging so everyone's shadows and
00:25:37.160
you're blindfolded but you can always see through the bottom of the blindfold and you know and and
00:25:42.680
we've all seen the terrorist videos with james foley you know picture eight of those guys because
00:25:48.240
that's what they were all wearing they all have that costume so they're you're you're basically in
00:25:52.100
a room with a bunch of these guys dressed like that and this is what's going on and they have
00:25:57.000
little kids in there watching they're teaching them priming them and it's uh it's a it's a very
00:26:03.260
unpleasant experience and you know even when you're not the guy in the tire in the boiler room
00:26:08.400
you know there are times where you know they take us down to the bathroom and we have to walk right
00:26:11.660
by that room as this is going on and you just hear them screaming and yelling and it echoes throughout
00:26:16.320
the hallways and it's just surreal so you got moved from the hospital to this place it's kind of like an
00:26:22.820
electrical facility and that was that was the conditions were even worse than the hospital like you
00:26:27.560
said the hospital was actually pretty good well like what changed in this this electrical facility like
00:26:32.360
why was it so bad uh the the yeah the electrical institute i think it's like a college slash
00:26:37.800
facility type of thing for uh your regular citizens but uh now it's it's it was probably
00:26:43.660
one of the biggest terrorist bases in the world like if you saw a satellite shot in this place it's
00:26:49.240
like basically an entire college campus turned into a terrorist base just to give perspective and
00:26:54.980
it was like i described it in the book it was literally the dark side of hell i mean we were in hell
00:27:01.240
before now we were in the dark side and what made it the worst was uh the hunger like that was the
00:27:09.120
main form of torture in this place that they inflicted on us hunger and darkness a couple days
00:27:14.480
in they they transferred us to a cell where we spent most of the uh almost 40 days and it was dark
00:27:20.800
almost all the time they barely fed us and like you can when you're hungry for you know going on for
00:27:29.320
like 30 hours without eating and then you just get a piece of bread and or a piece of or like a
00:27:35.980
little saucer with some halau and you have to share it with the guy next to you i mean it's just
00:27:41.580
it's physically and emotionally draining and on top of that there's no light crawling with bedbugs
00:27:49.400
so you can't even delouse so you just feel these bugs crawling all over you sucking your blood
00:27:55.420
and people die from that you know if if you read about prisoner of war experiences if you don't
00:28:01.060
delouse you know these things they'll suck you dry so we were in a really bad spot they would blast music
00:28:06.840
for hours on end like right outside our door and then there were the bathroom trips which were
00:28:12.280
a nightmare unto themselves you know we'd have to go to the bathroom like once a day
00:28:17.520
and uh it was like walking the gauntlet on the way down there they didn't really physically
00:28:22.200
torture me that much there i got flogged with a garden hose once but mostly it was just they
00:28:27.920
were just torturing my cellmate me they pretty much left alone and just let me suffer with with
00:28:33.880
hunger and darkness and bedbugs but we lived like this for close to 40 days and after that they
00:28:40.580
transferred us back to the hospital i mean like during all this time like what kept you going
00:28:44.640
especially in this really dark time like was it just like fall back on faith there was like stoic
00:28:48.560
philosophy existentialism like what was it during that time man it's it's really hard to say you
00:28:55.520
know there's always this will that you want to get home because you know that your loved ones are
00:29:00.440
suffering and if you don't get home to them you know you're just basically ruining their lives as well
00:29:07.040
as yours but you know my cellmate was a huge inspiration to me because i would look at him and be like
00:29:14.320
don't be like him because the electrical institute broke whatever was left of him and he was just
00:29:20.220
hiding under the covers all day all night he never came out unless you know it was to eat go to the
00:29:28.240
bathroom or pick bed bugs off himself because eventually they put light in the room but i mean
00:29:33.640
it never worked maybe it worked like less than 10 percent of the time because the electricity was always out
00:29:38.440
and when you're locked in a room with somebody like that who won't talk who won't come out from
00:29:44.460
under the covers you know this is a 44 year old man you know you can either curl up in a ball and give
00:29:50.900
up like him or you can keep going and i just chose to keep going so you got moved back to the hospital
00:29:57.480
you're there for a bit then they moved you to a warehouse right well the warehouse was a couple of
00:30:02.800
jails first from the hospital you know they threw the moroccan guy in with us and then from there we
00:30:07.640
were moved to a villa out in the country which was like a two two and a half hour drive really really
00:30:14.500
intense experience i mean there was a gunfight at one of the checkpoints you know the guys our
00:30:19.320
transport lost two guys during that really intense like the suicide bombers were out standing like 20
00:30:25.700
feet away from us ready to go and we got to a villa general muhammad's villa had a prison in the basement
00:30:31.640
like all syrian villas and then we were transferred back into aleppo into the hands of another terrorist
00:30:37.980
group for about a month and a half when i was back with the soldiers at that point and then after
00:30:43.240
that that's when we were transferred to the warehouse gotcha hey and you mentioned the moroccan he kind of
00:30:48.080
joined you and became a part of you and theo's little group there this guy sounded crazy because he had
00:30:54.140
he oh my god right tell us about this guy the moroccan was i mean
00:31:00.940
he he was i mean as much as i hated theo i hated the moroccan and and this guy was extremely intelligent
00:31:10.480
extremely intelligent and a psychopath at the same time and basically his story was
00:31:17.840
almost too hard to believe like a lot of my story but long story short is he went to syria
00:31:25.480
uh from morocco after stealing his sister's car and selling it so he can finance the trip because
00:31:30.560
he got into a big fight with his dad and when he got there he started pretending that he was a doctor
00:31:36.700
to the point where he was working with doctors without borders like he literally knew people who
00:31:41.900
were in that organization that i found out like i confirmed a lot of it after i came home and uh
00:31:48.140
joined al-nosra the al-nosra front the terrorist group as a doctor
00:31:52.320
and needless to say he had no degree or no education at being a doctor so it didn't really take him
00:31:59.860
the long to figure out his his game and after marrying a woman under a false identity which is a big deal
00:32:08.900
in that part of the world like a half hour after the wedding they shot him he was driving in a car
00:32:13.380
they got pulled over the same fashion i did they shot him in the leg threw him in the trunk and
00:32:18.220
brought him to the hospital where they basically locked him in the torture room cuffed him to a bed
00:32:25.060
and left him there for like a week without any medical attention just shoved the catheter in him
00:32:30.840
and let it empty out into a bucket unbelievable that this guy survived by the time they threw him
00:32:36.440
in with us you know his leg was just the bullet hole was healed over but it was so bloated
00:32:41.740
like it looked like it was gonna pop and uh his feet you know and you could feel his femur was just
00:32:47.400
broken and uh he was basically uh like i said he was like 6'3 230 pounds and i got along with him at
00:32:57.960
first because he spoke english and lived in the states for 12 years he got deported for you know
00:33:03.480
falsifying his personal information on a banana republic job application if you can believe that
00:33:09.580
and uh yeah i mean it's just you can't make this up and he was very dominant and that's when i started
00:33:18.020
fighting with him because you know he was he was trying to be like the the the head guy in the cell
00:33:23.580
and you know i'm not gonna be bossed around by anybody if you don't have a gun and especially
00:33:28.700
somebody with a broken leg but theo my cellmate became his property it was basically once i started
00:33:36.520
fighting with the moroccan theo was his property so it was like two against one and that all changed
00:33:42.320
when we were transferred into a cell with the soldiers again who i was who i became friends
00:33:45.620
with early on so now i had like over 20 guys with me and they were just basically on their own because
00:33:51.740
the soldiers hated theo because he's theo and they hated the moroccan because he's their enemy he's you
00:33:58.620
know an admitted member of a terrorist organization and you know the american who's basically his sidekick
00:34:03.960
he's not going to really hold favor with them not not just because he's working with their enemy but
00:34:09.720
because he's betraying his country you know they don't hate america the soldiers at least at that point
00:34:15.900
but uh they didn't love america either because of our government and you know it doesn't matter where
00:34:22.280
you're from or who you are when you see somebody you know who's not standing up for where he's from
00:34:29.020
and basically betraying it you can't respect them so that's basically why the soldiers
00:34:34.320
straight off the bat didn't like him so things just got worse with theo as you guys got moved along
00:34:41.060
and you got moved with the moroccan too and you reached a point where the moroccan got taken away
00:34:44.840
one night and he didn't come back right right like i said he was a big dude so the prison that i broke out
00:34:51.500
of the windows you know like any basement windows they're high up off the ground and you know they're
00:34:55.480
very narrow and uh one night they just came down a whole bunch of guys and we never got visitors
00:35:02.280
that late so it was like a really odd occurrence and we could feel it that something was going to
00:35:07.800
happen it's weird how you get this intuition when something's about to happen over there and we heard
00:35:13.500
them lining up outside the door and we had to face the wall every time they came in we weren't allowed
00:35:17.540
to look at them and the moroccan said he's like there's a lot of people out there and you can tell he
00:35:23.540
was scared and i was just like yeah and they came in they asked him his name said his name and then
00:35:29.680
they took him and he never came back and this is after like four months of being stuck in a room with
00:35:34.840
this guy for 24 hours a day seven days a week no end in sight so it was refreshing to have him gone
00:35:41.900
we found out they killed him later on and because he was gone now that's when we started planning the
00:35:47.620
escape because there was no way he could fit through the window so once he was gone it created
00:35:54.700
the opportunity right and initially theo was on board but then there he had like this this like
00:36:00.140
change of heart where he said like i'm actually gonna turn you in if you try to escape yeah well i
00:36:05.640
mean escape escapes usually don't work out the first time you know and it didn't work out the first
00:36:12.880
time when we ended up at the electrical institute it didn't work out the first time on this occasion
00:36:17.660
so i figured out why it didn't work and i amended the plan and by then he was like no i changed my
00:36:24.780
mind i'm not doing it if you try to do it i'm going to knock on the door and tell on you and i was just
00:36:29.900
like you're going to tell on me you're going to turn me into al-qaeda and he's like yeah so uh i didn't
00:36:36.560
think he was being serious i thought he was just you know being himself and when i went over to the
00:36:41.380
window he knocked on the door and loud like he was gonna he was literally gonna rat me out he
00:36:47.820
admits that he did all this by the way this isn't like something my word against his he admits that
00:36:51.840
he did this and uh he turned around with his chest out like like you know like i'm a tough guy i got
00:36:58.960
al-qaeda's got my back so uh the only way to get him back on board was to make him so miserable that
00:37:06.580
he wouldn't want to be stuck in a room with me anymore so that's what i did it took about three hours
00:37:10.840
what would you do oh i just insulted him and broke on him for just non-stop for like three hours just
00:37:18.240
about you know what a disgrace he was to our country like how you know how it's bad enough
00:37:24.360
the terrorists are holding me here now you're the one holding me here how you know you're gonna let
00:37:28.800
you know his mother was like 79 80 years old i was like you're gonna let your mother die
00:37:32.720
not knowing what happened to you or worse having to watch you get your head cut off on mine
00:37:38.900
you know just stuff like that and you know a lot of language that i don't want to use here
00:37:43.560
applying that to me until he basically was just like okay okay he's like i can't take it anymore
00:37:49.360
type of type of thing he's like i didn't say i was completely turned off to it and that's when we
00:37:55.020
started you know planning it again and you know obviously he's like well we have to wait three days
00:37:59.400
because he was you know he was doing everything he could to try to thwart the attempt and you know
00:38:05.000
three days we would we were due to be transferred so he was hoping we'd be transferred or they'd
00:38:09.000
throw somebody else in with us which they did twice in that cell after the morocco was gone but
00:38:13.540
they always took him away so if those things happened we would have to scrap the idea but you
00:38:19.960
know fortunately for me it didn't happen so he had to go he had to go forward with it so we'll let
00:38:25.140
people check out the books they can get the escape parks it's it's interesting what happens um right
00:38:30.880
well matt is there some place people can go to learn more about your work in the book
00:38:35.140
i have a website matthewschreier.com the book is on amazon the dawn prayer or how to survive in a
00:38:41.240
secret syrian terrorist prison that's the best way to learn about me and my experience and it's a
00:38:47.420
completely different book than any that have come out before you know because i'm not trying to get
00:38:53.660
your pity i don't deserve it nobody told me to go over there and it's actually pretty funny because i'm
00:38:58.740
not trying to make you cry make you cry a river so if if anybody really wants to learn about this
00:39:04.140
that's probably the best way just read the book fantastic well matthew schreier thanks so much
00:39:07.300
your time it's been a pleasure right thank you for having me man ever having another book i'd love to
00:39:10.860
come back my guest here is matthew schreier he's the author of the book the dawn prayer it's available
00:39:15.860
on amazon.com also check out our show notes at aom.is slash dawn prayer where you find links to
00:39:21.220
resources where you delve deeper into this topic
00:39:23.280
well that wraps up another edition of the a1 podcast check out our website artofmanliness.com
00:39:36.240
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00:39:40.940
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00:39:59.620
reminding you not only listen to the a1 podcast but put what you've heard into action